OK, I need help from all you PC experts out there.
I'm having trouble with my 2006 Dell Laptop - with Windows XP. It can't boot up. The message I get:
"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM"
It says I can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup using the original Setup CD ROM....
....but I can't find it.
Question: how screwed am I? Can I get this Setup CD Rom at Best Buy?
6 comments:
Most likely the Windows Setup CDROM it is referring to is just the CD/DVD you would normally use to install Windows. So you can probably get that at Best Buy or your local computer store. However, you will basically be buying another copy of Windows so it's not going to be cheap. Also, in order to have any hope of it repairing the system it will need to be the same version of Windows that is currently installed on your computer. I'm guessing that would be XP and I'm pretty sure they just don't sell that anymore now that they are pushing Vista.
Dell usually provides Dell-specific version of Windows with their computers so if you know anyone else that has a Dell you may want to check with them and see if they have their Windows CD that came with the computer. That should work just fine to repair your machine.
Alternatively, it's probably worth your while to give Dell tech support a call and see if there is anything they can do for you. They just might ship you a replacement Windows CD. I actually wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that outcome but it can't hurt to try before you go drop $100+ on a new copy of Windows that you don't really need.
If you do need to go buy a new copy of Windows be very sure that you buy the same version that is already installed. A Windows Vista CD will NOT repair your Windows XP installation.
Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
Apparently I missed the part where you said it was XP. Is it XP Home or XP Professional? If you need to buy a new disk here are links to both:
XP Professional
XP Home
Not sure if this is the cheapest place to get them, but it's at least close and I use that site for all of my computer purchases.
Thanks, Brad.
I got a copy of XP from my brother in law (you guess right, it is XP) and have used that to get to the recovery tool.
I copied the system, software, sam, and security files over from c:\windows repair; I then got an error about a coorupt c_437.nls file.
After googling a bit, I think I found a way out of it - expanding the same file on the windows drive.
Now I have windows up and running, but none of the user names are present and none of the software seems to work. I'm going to copy the backup software and security files that I used to have in the windows/system32 directory and see if this works.
Oh dear
now I messed it up
it is trying to load up windows, but returns an error when checking passwords.....
and now I can't get into the Windows XP repair, as it asks for an administrator password, which I don't know (and blank doesn't work).
I'm not sure how much help this will be now, but if your current problem is just that you can't log in as administrator try the instructions
here. That should at least let you change the Administrator password and get you into recovery mode again.
I've had this happen before and you're most likely hosed. In most of these cases unless you have a lot of apps installed, it's just easier to reinstall the OS and the apps. I don't think I've ever seen Windows repair work except for in the simplest cases.
There is a Microsoft KB article (Q307545) for this problem, but the repair won't work in your case because you probably had XP preinstalled by Dell. Calling support is usually a waste of your time.
Once you get it back up and running, go out and buy something like Norton Ghost and an external USB drive. Then run weekly or monthly backups.
I've used it for recovery probably 3 or 4 times since I bought it including this past week.
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