Hi, I turned my pc on the other day and i get this error message. Windows XP will NOT start at all. I dont know how or why it happened. I have found the article at Microsoft about it and printed it off. However i have got the XP Pro setup cd i boot pc up and insert the disc and it says wait for a loading screen....Nothing comes up at all, no screen!!! So i cant even get this on to try and fix it. Does anyone know how i can get this working and then fix the error? But mainly i need the pc to pick up the CD so i can start! Any help would be great! Im really stuck. Cheers Paul
First off, make sure you can get into the BIOS and make sure that the computer is set to boot off the CD-ROM drive first. Then boot off the CD and instead of doing a fresh install of windows which is your last resort fix, you wanna run a repair install which will replace all the corrupted files that the computer cant find or are screwed up. Hope that works.
Hi, Thanks for the reply, i cant even get into the repair mode, it will not boot up from the cd. I have set up the first book to cd/dvd. Heres the info:- The options i get are: Press F2 for Setup Press F11 for Boot menu. I have changed the boot order as you suggested to boot from DVD/CD drives first, in this order- 1. DVD/CD 2. Hard Drive 3. Floppy disk I have tried booting direct from the book menu selecting the DVD drive. This does get a little further... When booting from the DVD/CD drive i get a black screen, saying: 'Press any key to book from CD....' then i press the keys hoping something will happen and i will see the screen where i can start to fix my original problem. But it goes back to the error message: Missing or corrupt \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM, Insert the original installation disc and press 'r' to enter the recovery at start up. It will not go past here, when booting from the disc it doesnt do anything. The disc i have is from work, as my pc didnt come with the XP disc, it is as follows: - Reinstalltion CD Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 The CD is from DELL. Thats about as much info as i have got really, my pc is fairly new had it upgraded to a descent spec 6months or so ago. Any ideas, im at a loose end here now. Thanks Paul
That reinstallation CD is only going to work with the computer it came with. You need a full version XP CD.
Thats the thing, i have not got a cd for xp with my computer. The shop put it on for me but did not give me an xp cd. Would any XP Pro install cd work as long as its a genuine one? I downloaded a few off the internet and it does the same thing with them.
On your computer you need to do a "chkdsk c:/f" . That can ussually fix the problem you have. The "chkdsk" command will fix file corruption which is what you have. See if you can make a "bartpe" on another computer. All you need is the "bartpe" software (free), your copy of the "windows boot cd" and a blank cd. Once you burn a "bartpe" use that to bootup your computer, from there you can use the "command prompt" to run the "chkdsk c:/f" command. This is an easy to fix problem. It is usually cause when the computer is improperly shutdown. The chckdsk command has always fix this problem for me. Another thing you can do is remove the hard drive, slave it onto another computer and run a scandisk (with the box to fix all errors checked).
