R
RFirst
My wife was using my laptop to surf the web (my first
problem), and she later told me "oh something's wrong
with the computer, I don't know what I did..."
When I tried to start it up, the system got just past the
XP Home splash screen and up popped the strange error
message: "Unable to start: system is unable to start
because the following file is missing or corrupted:
c:\windows\system32\config\system" -- and here it stayed
until I did a hard reboot.
So, I grabbed my trusty XP boot floppy, booted to the A:
drive, then checked out the system32\config directory.
The system file was not there. So I copied the one from
windows\repair to windows\system32\config, and tried to
reboot. Again, same error message. When I again booted
from the XP boot floppy, the entire windows\system32
\config directory was gone... in it's place was a single
file called config (!)
Now totally befuddled, I made a temp directory in
windows\system32 and copied this new config file into it,
then deleted the windows\system32\config file. I then
made a new directory called config in the
windows\system32 directory, and in it copied all the
necessary files from the windows\repair directory (sam,
software, security, default, system).
When I removed the floppy and rebooted, I got another
error message at about the same point as the other
one: "lsass.exe -- System Error: when trying to update a
password, the return status indicates the value provided
as the current password is not correct." The system then
resets itself, and this loop continues indefinitely.
I then tried using my XP install CD to repair the system
using the Recovery Console, but it will not accept the
Admin account password that I had previously set. I
subsequently tried using a utility called chntpw to reset
all the user account passwords, but still got the same
error message upon subsequent reboots.
So, can anyone tell me how to completely reset the admin
password by editing the registry? Keep in mind that I
can only boot the machine to command line using my XP
boot floppy or the chntpw bootable cd... Or has anyone
heard of a virus that causes such behavior (could not
find anything on Network Assoc. or McAfee websites)?
Any and all help is most appreciated.
Richard
problem), and she later told me "oh something's wrong
with the computer, I don't know what I did..."
When I tried to start it up, the system got just past the
XP Home splash screen and up popped the strange error
message: "Unable to start: system is unable to start
because the following file is missing or corrupted:
c:\windows\system32\config\system" -- and here it stayed
until I did a hard reboot.
So, I grabbed my trusty XP boot floppy, booted to the A:
drive, then checked out the system32\config directory.
The system file was not there. So I copied the one from
windows\repair to windows\system32\config, and tried to
reboot. Again, same error message. When I again booted
from the XP boot floppy, the entire windows\system32
\config directory was gone... in it's place was a single
file called config (!)
Now totally befuddled, I made a temp directory in
windows\system32 and copied this new config file into it,
then deleted the windows\system32\config file. I then
made a new directory called config in the
windows\system32 directory, and in it copied all the
necessary files from the windows\repair directory (sam,
software, security, default, system).
When I removed the floppy and rebooted, I got another
error message at about the same point as the other
one: "lsass.exe -- System Error: when trying to update a
password, the return status indicates the value provided
as the current password is not correct." The system then
resets itself, and this loop continues indefinitely.
I then tried using my XP install CD to repair the system
using the Recovery Console, but it will not accept the
Admin account password that I had previously set. I
subsequently tried using a utility called chntpw to reset
all the user account passwords, but still got the same
error message upon subsequent reboots.
So, can anyone tell me how to completely reset the admin
password by editing the registry? Keep in mind that I
can only boot the machine to command line using my XP
boot floppy or the chntpw bootable cd... Or has anyone
heard of a virus that causes such behavior (could not
find anything on Network Assoc. or McAfee websites)?
Any and all help is most appreciated.
Richard