WinXP recovery and start up not working........

[Guest]

Hello First of all any help concerning my problem will be grately
appreciated. Well my problem began about 3 days ago, my computer crashed and
I was told to perform a system recovery and so I did and I had no problems
for about 1 day and then I started getting pop up after pop up so I ran
Norton AntiVirus 2004 Professional Edition. And after Norton ran and checked
my system it listed about 20 Adware threats I pressed the delete button
Norton was able to delete 11 files. So I countinued to locate the rest of the
files on my own and I found each one and manually deleted them. After I
completed deleting the adware files I received a pop up that said that it is
recommeded that I restart my computer for changes to take affect and so I
did. That is when all my problems really started as windows was get ready to
boot up again it went straight to the system recovery screen and so I turned
off my computer thinking this was an error and as my computer started to boot
up again It did the same thing again as it went to the system recovery
screen, I tried evertyhing I possibly know trying to avoid the system
recovery again, I tried booting up in safe mode and I get the error message
"system not properly installed" and every other way I possibly know but no
luck. So last night I finally boot up my computer and as it went to the sytem
recovery screen I pressed and preformed another system recovery and I was
thinking okay after this windows should start again, Wrong! But it seems that
way after the system recovery is complete it asked me to select a computer
name and the location of the computer then it ask me for my time zone and ask
me if I hear sound comming from the speakers and so then I reach the final
screen and it is says "Thank you" windows is set up and ready to go and it
tells me to press next button at the bottom of the screen to proceed and
start using my computer but when I press next button the computer locks up
and freezes everytime. At times I receive the message saying "The following
file is missing or corrupt, \WINDOWS\system32\config\SYSTEM I dont know what
to do anymore? I have tried the system recovery and nothing happens it just
locks up the computer, I have tried to boot up windows using all the
functions in F8"safe mode" and nothing happens? And I want to try to avoid
formating my hard drive casue I have alot of personal data files on my C:\
if at all possible I want to save if possible, but at times I dont know cause
when i try system recovery that dont even work, so im lost, and dont have a
clue as what to do, please help...Thank you

 

[Rock]

Hello First of all any help concerning my problem will be grately
appreciated. Well my problem began about 3 days ago, my computer crashed and
I was told to perform a system recovery and so I did and I had no problems
for about 1 day and then I started getting pop up after pop up so I ran
Norton AntiVirus 2004 Professional Edition. And after Norton ran and checked
my system it listed about 20 Adware threats I pressed the delete button
Norton was able to delete 11 files. So I countinued to locate the rest of the
files on my own and I found each one and manually deleted them. After I
completed deleting the adware files I received a pop up that said that it is
recommeded that I restart my computer for changes to take affect and so I
did. That is when all my problems really started as windows was get ready to
boot up again it went straight to the system recovery screen and so I turned
off my computer thinking this was an error and as my computer started to boot
up again It did the same thing again as it went to the system recovery
screen, I tried evertyhing I possibly know trying to avoid the system
recovery again, I tried booting up in safe mode and I get the error message
"system not properly installed" and every other way I possibly know but no
luck. So last night I finally boot up my computer and as it went to the sytem
recovery screen I pressed and preformed another system recovery and I was
thinking okay after this windows should start again, Wrong! But it seems that
way after the system recovery is complete it asked me to select a computer
name and the location of the computer then it ask me for my time zone and ask
me if I hear sound comming from the speakers and so then I reach the final
screen and it is says "Thank you" windows is set up and ready to go and it
tells me to press next button at the bottom of the screen to proceed and
start using my computer but when I press next button the computer locks up
and freezes everytime. At times I receive the message saying "The following
file is missing or corrupt, \WINDOWS\system32\config\SYSTEM I dont know what
to do anymore? I have tried the system recovery and nothing happens it just
locks up the computer, I have tried to boot up windows using all the
functions in F8"safe mode" and nothing happens? And I want to try to avoid
formating my hard drive casue I have alot of personal data files on my C:\
if at all possible I want to save if possible, but at times I dont know cause
when i try system recovery that dont even work, so im lost, and dont have a
clue as what to do, please help...Thank you

Your system is in bad shape, sorry to say. The first thing you should
do is try to recover the data. Put the drive in another XP computer as
a slave drive and see if it will read the drive. If so copy off the
essential data.

After that the best thing for you to do is a clean install, reinstalling
programs from the original media, and then copying back the data you
saved earlier. Next time make sure you always have a full and complete
backup.

Clean Install
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

 

[Kelly]

Hi Frank,

White Space: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_w.htm#wp

--
Happy Mardi Gras,
Kelly (MS-MVP)

Troubleshooting Windows XP
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com

 

[Guest]

Actually I thought it was a good post.....Very informative.

As for your issue Frank here is the stem of the problem.
The file c:\windows\system32\config\system is actually a registry file that
has failed to load during boot.
Now with that being said the non destructive write that you did may have
actually taken away the chance to fully recover the file due to the backup
files in the repair folder being overwritten.
Usually there is a folder in c;\windows called repair that has all 5
registry files there for backup purposes. When the non destructive write is
performed these 5 files get overwritten with the 5 files currently being
used, henceforth, copying the bad/corrupted system file to the repair
directory.

Your only chance now is to try to get the data off the machine and then
perform a destructive write with your recovery disk.

Different methods are as what Rock said, put the hard drive into another
machine to extract the data, or perhaps take it to a shop to have it
professionally retrieved.

It is not really recommended to perform a registry repair (article 307545)
on an oem computer let alone only partially performing the steps in the
article as previously suggested.

A snip from the article:
Note: Make sure to replace all five of the registry hives. If you only
replace a single hive or two, this can cause potential issues because
software and hardware may have settings in multiple locations in the
registry.

Just in case you want to look over the article yourself here is the link:

How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from
starting
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

 

[Kelly]

I didn't say it wasn't.

--
Happy Mardi Gras,
Kelly (MS-MVP)

Troubleshooting Windows XP
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com