Yesterday I was tweaking my win2k machine and disabled a number of unneeded
services.
After several reboots...there were no problems.
When I went to print a document I realized that I had mistakenly disabled
"spooler" so I re-enabled it and all went well
until the next time I rebooted...

I got the message that system32\config\system was corrupted or missing...
so I chose "last good configuration" and the machine booted fine...
however spooler was disabled. When I re-enabled spooler...again all was fine
until the next reboot
where i got the same error!

Only this time..."last good confguration" did not work!

I slaved the drive to another system and restored the entire system32\config
folder from a recent backup (made *prior* to my tweaking the services)
and the machine worked just fine all day yesterday.

Of course today when I booted it up again I got the same "system corrupted
or missing" error
(and last known config) did not work.

It sure looks like it could possibly be a drive hardware error

but the mfg's diagnostic found no errors...nor did running chkdsk /r


The thing I found interesting is that when I tried to run a repair
installation...
no operating system was found...however when I initiated (but canceled) a
fresh installation...the installer "sees" the winnt folder.


At this point I'm thinking of just plain recloning my OS (a working version
of it that is) to an entirely different HD

How big is the system hive?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/269075


--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

"philo" wrote:
> Yesterday I was tweaking my win2k machine and disabled a number of
> unneeded services.
> After several reboots...there were no problems.
> When I went to print a document I realized that I had mistakenly disabled
> "spooler" so I re-enabled it and all went well
> until the next time I rebooted...
>
> I got the message that system32\config\system was corrupted or missing...
> so I chose "last good configuration" and the machine booted fine...
> however spooler was disabled. When I re-enabled spooler...again all was
> fine until the next reboot
> where i got the same error!
>
> Only this time..."last good confguration" did not work!
>
> I slaved the drive to another system and restored the entire
> system32\config folder from a recent backup (made *prior* to my tweaking
> the services)
> and the machine worked just fine all day yesterday.
>
> Of course today when I booted it up again I got the same "system
> corrupted or missing" error
> (and last known config) did not work.
>
> It sure looks like it could possibly be a drive hardware error
>
> but the mfg's diagnostic found no errors...nor did running chkdsk /r
>
>
> The thing I found interesting is that when I tried to run a repair
> installation...
> no operating system was found...however when I initiated (but canceled) a
> fresh installation...the installer "sees" the winnt folder.
>
>
> At this point I'm thinking of just plain recloning my OS (a working
> version of it that is) to an entirely different HD
>
>

"Dave Patrick" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:C82C28DE-E6FD-4CE5-9F80-(E-Mail Removed)...
> How big is the system hive?
>
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/269075
>
>
>


The hive seems to be OK

I think it might just have been a (slightly) bad clone.

I've recloned my system to another drive and am going to just move on

thanks for the reply