The Windows registry is a massive 30+ year modern labyrinth that is still under construction. Deadly traps, hidden treasures, and secret doors thoroughly litter it. I recently discovered yet another of secret within it: Setting some critical kernel mode drivers to silently fail will allow one to continue booting the system if that kernel driver has been corrupted. Great write-up, thanks for sharing.
"OS continues to boot when you tell it to make failure to load a driver a warning, rather than a catastrophic error." seems to me to be the system working as intended.
Triply so if you have to be on the other side of the airtight hatchway (as it were) to instruct the OS to do this. What am I missing? [0]
[0] NOTE: "It shouldn't permit a full computer administrator to let this happen!" is not a valid argument. Full admins have full control (and -often- physical access) to the machines they administer. If you don't trust your full admins, you've already lost.
This is where Windows gets messy on what the idea of an admin is. It came from a history of 'full admin by default' instead of a "you never use root unless ___".
If your grandma had a Windows XP box with a default user, it was a 'full admin', but most likely grandma had no idea of how to administer it. So you ended up with a SYSTEM privilege that is even above admin. The full admin needs to promote themselves (run as) temporarily to that priv to change some things.