Resurrecting a crashed XP Home machine.

[***** charles]

Hi all,

I decided to do some updates that M$ suggested.
After/while doing them, the computer crashed.
Now when I turn the machine on, it gives me the following:

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

\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows
Setup using the original setup CDROM
Select 'r' at the first screen to start repair.

I did this. The SYSTEM file is huge and nothing looks
even remotely like it in the g:\i386 directory where the
cd is located. I can get to the c: prompt in recovery
mode but from there I am at a loss. Any ideas on how
to fix this?

thanks for any pointers,
charles......

 

[Ted Zieglar]

Look 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

Ted Zieglar

 

[***** charles]

Tried that, the first copy command gives me
"the file could not be copied".