nomcgyver said:
I have the recovery disks for my laptop, but a Toshiba tech told me the
only
way to replace the config file involved wiping out all the data on my hard
drive.
Using only the recovery disks instead of an XP boot disk or other method,
this may be true. But there *are* other methods that are not supported by
recovery disks or Toshiba (or in some cases MS).
Is there any way to extract just the config file?
No. It's not extracted, it's created. There is a backup on your system
from when XP was initially installed, but it knows nothing of installed
programs. It is what you will swap in, as part of a set of files, to
restart the system.
Can it be
downloaded from MicroSoft or another source on the net?
No.
What exactly is the
name of the file?
"config".
Any help would be appreciated.
It looks to me like you are getting a message that "Windows cannot start
because the following file is corrupt or missing" and names the config file.
This file is a component of the Registry. There is an established
procedure for recovering from this. the KB article below tells you how to
do it with any bootable XP CD and the Recovery Console (it may be that the
Recovery Console is installed on your system; press F8 at startup to see).
You can, however, do all the tasks by booting with a Linux CD that
recognises NTFS, or by hosting the drive on another XP system. Adjust the
directions accordingly. Once you have the system restarted with the
original backup registry, you do a system restore.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545
HTH
-pk
