I have a situation where I am recieving this error:

'STOP: c0000218 (Registry File Failure)
The registry cannot load the hive (file):\SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE'

when booting a hard drive on one computer, but it works perfectly when the drive is attached to a different computer.
I've scanned the forum and found out what to do if it is a software problem, but could this mean that there is some hardware problem (memory stick, connection, etc.) with the original computer? I am using windows 2000.
I would appreciate any input. Thank you.