System 32 seems fatal error - help sought

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mr & Mrs Williams
  • Start date Start date
M

Mr & Mrs Williams

I am using a Dell Dimensions 4400 P4 machine. Its about 18 months old. My
daughter has a dimension 4600 which is working otherwise I would be sobbing
and unable to post this to try and get help!

My system runs on XP and we have subscription based virus software -
Norton - and also the most upto date firewall - I have the windows patches
on auto settings - which I am concerned may be reason for this current
nightmare!

I was web browsing today - we are on dial up - when my machine froze. When I
rebooted it - I simply get the blue Dell earth page and then the following
on black page with white writing:

windows cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupt.
windows\system32\config\system
you can attempt to repair this file by starting the windows set up using the
original cd rom.
Select R at the first screen to start the repair.

I have used the XP disc provided by Dell but the machine simply does not
recognise it - I have managed to get into a d:\ prompt and entered
setup.exe but it stated it could not run the programme from dos. This CD is
the original one - not a copy of any description.

It seems it does not matter what Cd I put in either drive - nothing is
happening. The drive whirs and humms - but that's it!

The machine that is playing up has 2 cd drives - one is simply a reader the
other is a reader/writer - and it does have a floppy. My working machine is
a mere 2 weeks old - and outlet purchase - and does not have a floppy only a
CDRW.

An old Win 98 boot floppy disc did do something - and I got into DOS - but
setup.exe would not work on the D drive - it merely tells me that the
programme will not run from dos.

I am climbing walls and the 35 minute holding for Dell tech support did not
result in me speaking to anyone - thus my attempt to source help here.

I am not a techy - so any help at all would be very much appreciated - I
have read some of the other posts and followed the reboot from disc
instructions - but my cd drives just don't seem to want to play ball.

Debbie - balding as I tear out greying hair!
 
Hi,

How exactly are you trying to load the XP setup? Forgive me if I'm wrong,
but from your message it sounds like you're starting from DOS and trying to
run setup from there. My interpretation of the error message is that you
should do the following:

1) Restart the computer and enter BIOS by pressing the "DEL" key on the
number pad when it prompts you

2) Navigate to the "BOOT" tab using left and right arrow keys

3) Change the boot settings such that the CD-Rom drive with the XP disk is
first on the list, e.g. by selecting and disabling the hard disk boot
instruction.

4) Exit and Save Changes.

5) The computer will restart, and a message will appear asking you if you
want to Boot from the CD. You want to hold down the Enter key when you get
this, not all other keys will work. If the computer receives no response at
this point it will try to boot normally. If it doesn't work the first time
around restart and try again.

This should get you into XP setup, and if I remember rightly there is an
option to attempt a repair, presumably the one referred to in the error
message.

I'm not really a techie so I don't know why System should have become
corrupted. If the worst comes to the worst I'm afraid all I can suggest is
that you go to the DOS prompt, copy what files you can onto floppy and
reinstall Windows from XP setup - hardly an ideal solution! Hopefully it
won't come to that though.

Whatever you do, I doubt that experimenting with a Win98 CD will help, and
could seriously mess up the computer making a hard disk reformat necessary.

Good luck!

Andy
 
I apologise that the original message appeared twice - head hung in shame.

I thought I ought to add - my Home Edition XP is OEM software. When I went
to the microsoft site for the answer to my nightmare it tells :
SUMMARY
This article describes how to recover a Windows XP system that does
not start because of corruption in the registry.
This procedure does not guarantee full recovery of the system to a previous
state;
however, you should be able to recover data when you use this procedure.

Warning Do not use the procedure that is described in this article
if your computer has an OEM-installed operating system.
The system hive on OEM installations creates passwords and user
accounts that did not exist previously.
If you use the procedure that is described in this article, you may not
be able to log back into the recovery console to restore the original
registry hives.

What on earth does that mean! When I have read many of the instructions
offered via a google search - it all refers to full bought XP and not OEM.

I have no idea if this is relevant - but as I am getting more and more
stressed - it seemed a marginally useful fact for those who may have the
answer if sufficent information has been provided.

Kinds regards
 
As far as I can tell, OEM simply means that the software was installed on
your machine by the manufacturer. Why this affects troubleshooting I do not
know. I'm afraid the bit about the system hive creating previously
non-existant user names is a mystery to me as well.

I'm using Windows XP Professional in the UK, so there's no guarantee the
method I described in my previous post will actually work if your version is
very different. I'm surprised Dell customer support is so bad, I though
they were supposed to be reputable. Have you tried e-mailing them as well?

Andy
 
Andy

I wish I could tell you how I was trying to load the XP with a degree of
confidence - gulp - but I do not.

When I reboot and do nothing - I just get the error message and nothing else
will work - none of the keys etc etc.

If I reboot and keep pressing the esc as it fires up I do get into the bios
page - but hitherto had no idea to do once I had entry to this area.

Thus the desperate use of the wins 98 floppy and rebooting - that worked -
and gave me an A prompt which I turned into a D prompt etc.

I confess I must have made it worse - a fine example of attempting to trim a
beard with a chain saw - always going to be messy.

I am grateful for your list and will go and try them now and let you know.

Kind regards - I know I am a numpty! With all that virus software and
adaware and spybot running I am baffled how this happened - big sigh - guess
no sleep!

Debs
 
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