RE: Help! - I've screwed up my WinXP Pro installation

Tech Tip: Click here to run a free scan for Windows Errors and optimize PC performance

You might want to try rebooting to the recovery console from the XP Pro CD
and running chkdsk /r

-Nate




"Mark_King" wrote:

> Hi Guys,
>
> Hope someone can help me out here, i'm in a right mess!
>
> I seemed to have somehow managed to screw up one of my pc's which has
> Windows XP Pro installed on it.
>
> When booting the PC I get the following error message appear:
>
> 'Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
>
> \Windows\System32\config\system
>
> You can attempt to repair this file by starting the Windows Setup using the
> original CD-ROM.
> You can press 'r' at the first setup screen to enter the Recovery Console.'
>
>
> I have tried various things that havn't worked such as entering safe mode,
> using the FIXBOOT and FIXMBR commands at the recovery console, i've even
> tried to rename \Windows\System32\config\system to
> \Windows\System32\config\system.old in the hope that it might have created a
> new one.
>
> All of the above attempts have failed and need some help to try and get this
> sorted as I really, really, really, don't want to do a re-install, that
> would be a disaster. I've also tried a 2nd hard drive in the pc and booted
> from that hoping that it might have 'repaired' the damaged hard drive on
> start up, but it never! I've also tried (again using the 2nd hard drive),
> booting to windows and doing a disk scan of the hard drive in 'Disk
> Management', however this still didn't seem to solve it. Maybe there is
> someway of copying the file that it's looking for from somewhere?, I can't
> seem to find it on the XP Pro installation CD and wouldn't know how to copy
> it over as the extensions on the CD in the I386 folder all seem to have
> the'_' extension, rather than the full 3 digit extension.
>
> Please help I'm seriously desperate !
>
> Many thanks,
> Mark
>
>
>
.

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