I’m not sure whether or not this is suitable for general questions, but I desperately need help so I’ll give it a shot. Mods, if this belongs in a separate forum or doesn’t belong here at all, I apologize in advance.
Anyways…
After some problems with my PSU, it led to my computer shutting down unexpectedly. Now I get the following error when I turn on my computer:
“Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM”
It then says for me to press R and put in my windows xp cd to try to run recovery console.
I do that and get to the blue setup screen (BTW, I don’t have any ARS disks). When it finishes loading, I select repair. After I select that, it goes back to a black screen and it prompts:
“Which windows installation would you like to logon to? (enter to abort):”
At that prompt I it gives me space for only one character, and any alphabets are invalid. So I try the numbers 0-9; however, 0 and 2-9 are all invalid too. I press 1 and enter and it just freezes on me.
Instead of that I restart and go back to the setup screen and select install windows (which I would really really prefer not to do again). However, it freezes when it says “looking for previous installations of windows”.
BTW when I say freezes I mean it does nothing for over 15 minutes. No CD-ROM access, no HD access, no anything…
Please help, I have no idea what to do and I’m in way over my head!
Some quick stats:
Windows XP Pro
Intel P4 2.0A
Asus P4T533-C
256mb x 2 PC800 RDRAM
Seagate Barracuda IV 80GB
After I select repair and it goes to the black screen, the full text is more like this:
"
C:\Windows
Which windows installation would you like to logon to? (enter to abort):"
Basically, I have only one option, and that option does not work.
I don’t think sending it in to a computer shop would really help, since there seems to be only two options: repair or re-install, and since both are fairly straight-forward, I probably did not miss something.
So anyways, worst case scenario: I can’t boot off this hard drive and I buy a new hard drive. Can I get a 20GB to install Windows on it, and then slave this 80GB to get my data off it or use it for storage? (Or get a PCI IDE controller and do the something.) Will this work as long as I use the same file system for the new drive (NTFS)?
PS: I thought Windows XP Professional was supposed to be more reliable? I’ve only had this computer since Monday and I’m already getting this! (I already had to reinstall once, but that was my fault, and it wasn’t a biggie since I caught it soon after my initial install.)
PPS: I already checked Microsoft’s support website but it doesn’t say anything about what to do in the event that it freezes.
basically your XP has crashed. The surest way to recover would be to restore from backup. but i’m assuming you have no backups.
you should be able to recover your data, by either using it as a slave drive in another machine that can read NTFS partitions or by getting a new hard drive and installing an OS that can read NTFS partitions and using the hard-disk with the crashed OS as slave.
another tricky way to recover, without needing to make the drive slave is to boot to dos with a dos boot disk, along with this software:
…which makes an NTFS partition readable in DOS. use your experience, logic, etc, to figure out which system files to write over ( by copying them from another Win XP machine)
i have had loads of problems with XP on a number of machines… recovering from an XP crash is not as easy as with previous versions of Windows.
But, you can prevent further crashes in XP from affecting you too much. With the correct recovery tools and with creating backups regularly, you should be able to recover from any Windows XP crash in the future.
One (of many) things I suspect is that your hard drive’s file system has been corrupted. Have you run the NT equivalent of ScanDisk or similar software? (The CD recovery software should do this for you, but you never know.)
Thanks for the suggestions, xash. I spent over an hour today on the phone with a Microsoft technician (who was surprisingly helpful and kind), but we ultimately determined, much like you did, that I could not do anything with this drive as a master. So I picked up my dad’s computer (since it has Windows XP, albeit the home version, whereas my secondary computer is running 98SE) and slaved it up. From there, I was able to go to \Windows\repair\ and copy the system file there to \windows\system32\config. It was MUCH less painful than I imagined it to be – only my sound&video card drivers + my antivirus software had to be reinstalled; I also imagine that this would have been a much less painful solution for you too, dietrologia :p.
BTW, no, I’m not using an nVidia graphics card – I’m using an ATI Radeon 7500 for now since I don’t play any graphics intensive games.
It amazes me how a few bytes in a file only a few megabytes can almost cause me to lose 20+ gigabytes of data.
A lot of mobos come with Ghost. Making a bit image of your C drive is often prudent.
What I don’t understand is how you can slave your HDD to another computer considering both have the C drive. Is there something really obvious I am missing here?
Urban Ranger, the drive letter will change based on what controller port the drive is attached to.
And for anyone who needs to do the procedure Ian Fan did, but doesn’t want to call Microsoft for help, this site tells you how to do it http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_sys32.htm
That’s what I tried doing first, MannyL. However, the problem was that the corruption was so bad that I couldn’t even access recovery console. So I guess if you’re in the same situation as I am but don’t have access to a computer with an NTFS file system, you’re SOL.
It’ll be seen in the system that it’s connected to as D:, nothing on the drive changes. You can hook it back up as master, and it will be seen as C: again. I’ve done this a few time to recover data from friend’s drives. Hook em up to mine as a slave, repair em, put em back in as master.