winxp crashed: system corrupt?

[Harvey]

Hi,
One of our winxp on a PIII 450MHz computer crashed twice
since last week (it has been working normally for about a
year). It does not start, and shows the error message:

Windows could not start because the following file is
missing or corrupt:

\Windows\System32\Config\System

After the first crash, I repartitioned the hard drive,
installed the fresh winxp, ran windows updates and
installed Norton Antivirus. A coupe of days later, it
crashed again with the same message. Running the winxp
cd to Repair it does not provide the option to fix the
above error (the file System is there, but how to "repair
it"?).

Can somebody help me? Thanks!

Harvey

 

[Hilary Karp]

That error is refelctive of registry corruption. See this link for info:

"How to Recover from a Corrupted Registry That Prevents Windows XP from
Starting"
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q307545

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

The precise recovery steps are here:

How to Recover from a Corrupted Registry that Prevents Windows XP from
Starting
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545

Once you've recovered, you might want to look here, as well:

How to Troubleshoot Registry Corruption Issues
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;822705


Bruce Chambers
--
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