Need some help from Computer Experts - Windows XP ****ed up

[bowener]

I am trying to do a nice deed for my roommate while he is gone and I need some help from experts or patrons who have had similar troubles.

He started up his PC a few months ago and it wouldn't boot, prompting this message:

Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

I have found a lot of unhelpful information and techniques on the web. The problem I am having is that all of us in the apartment own computers with XP on them, but none of the cpu's came with XP from the manufacturer. They only came with the drivers disc. This has been a problem for me before, my computers not coming with the OS disc, but I was able to get around those because I could boot them in safe mode or fix them some other way, but his cpu will not boot at all since it is the registry files that are ****ed.

I would appreciate any help you can give me as soon as possible. He will be home in about 4 hours and I was hoping to get this done by then. Thanks in advance guys. I will by a beer for who ever helps me, if I ever meet you of course.

[J Diddy]

doesn't he have a recovery disk?

[phisherman]

the registry is hosed.

you need to do a registry restore, just google that error message and there are instructions for fixing it all over the place.

[bowener]

Yeah, the problem though is that none of us has the discs here because we have either moved too much and left them at other friends or parents' places, or lost them.

[bowener]

What would happen if i were to remove my Hard drive from my computer and put it as master drive, then mark his as the slave drive and manually go in and copy my registry files and replace his that way?

I realize that is most likely very unsafe if his is a virus issue. Does anyone know if the virus can leech over to the master drive without me actively placing a file of his in my HD?

[J Diddy]

Originally Posted by bowener

What would happen if i were to remove my Hard drive from my computer and put it as master drive, then mark his as the slave drive and manually go in and copy my registry files and replace his that way?

I realize that is most likely very unsafe if his is a virus issue. Does anyone know if the virus can leech over to the master drive without me actively placing a file of his in my HD?

I got this off one forum:


\config\system is your Windows registry. Your computer will not boot without this.

I can get into safe mode but get the same errorYou cannot get the same error and successfully boot into Safe Mode... It's a black screen with white text that says ...\config\system missing and that's it. So I dont understand this? Can you describe the error and what it looks like?

If your ..\config\system is really missing, its probably due to data corruption of viruses. You should try to run chkdsk from the Windows Recovery Console (http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000627.htm) and issue the following commands:chkdsk /f
Wait for it to scan/repair your file system and see what the results are. Then issue the command: copy "C:\Windows\Repair\System" "C:\Windows\System32\config"

If your error message is a pop up box or something else other than an unpassable black screen with white letters, then you probably have some hoax virus. Lsass.exe has often been the **** of viruses, so it wouldn't surprise me if this is caused by one.

The above commands will restore a previous (and hopefully working) copy of your registry.

[PastorMikH]

Originally Posted by bowener

Yeah, the problem though is that none of us has the discs here because we have either moved too much and left them at other friends or parents' places, or lost them.

Where did you get your computer? If it is from HP, Dell, or another mainline brand, you should be able to contact them with your system serial number and get a backup set of disks fairly cheap. If it's an HP, there's a good chance you didn't get disks as HP has a hidden partition with Windows on it. I bought a scrap HP computer for $30, stuck my hard drive in, called HP and told them I needed disks because I had put a new HD in the system. They sent me system restore disks for the computer for shipping only. Got a Windows XP program for less than $10 for the computer.

[Braincase]

Have you tried hitting the F8 function key at startup, then using the Last Known Good Configuration option?

[KCCHIEFS27]

The scenario that seems most common is a manufacturer that pre-installs Windows XP for you and then does not give you a CD to go with it. I think this is a bad practice but I understand that it may save the manufacturer and ultimately you a little bit of money.

Hopefully what that manufacturer has done is copy the Windows XP CD-ROM image to your hard disk. Hard disks are so big these days that doing so takes up very little room and has some advantages I'll talk about in a second.

To find out if the CD-ROM image is on your machine, search for a folder named I386. There may be several but the one we care about will contain close to 7,000 files, two of which will be winnt.exe and winnt32.exe. The I386 directory is typically one of the top-level directories on the distribution CD-ROM but most importantly it is the directory that contains the distributed copy of Windows XP. Winnt.exe and winnt32.exe are the DOS and protected mode setup programs, respectively.

[bowener]

Thanks for all the help guys. I finally got a hold of a disc so that is going to make things easier, but now I have to wait for him to get here since he has an admin password.