XP Disaster help needed please

[Alex H]

My Church have a windows XP machine, which when booted up this morning
displayed a message advising that windows\systems\32 files were
corrupt/missing and the machine will not boot.

I have tried to use System CD and select recovery, but that does not work,
as it tells me it cant find the correct directory.

I cannot get to DOS to see if the the C drive is still OK. On boot up the
diagnostics are telling me that the C drive is still there.

I tried formatting a floppy and selecting make Start Up disk, and that gets
me to A: drive, but I cannot switch to C drive.

Anyone any ideas or suggestions please. I need to try and boot up the
compouter either using a Floppy CD or USB pen.

Any help MUCH appreciated as I am not sure the Church ( whose computer it
is) have backed up their data....

Alex

 

[Guest]

Have ran into that problem before and it sucks, but I have fixed it 2
different ways. One on your recovery cd boot with it and pretend there is
nothing on the computer and use the xp setup to boot and select Install xp
fresh on first screen (not the repair), on second screen it will ask you to
install fresh copy and repair, dont choose fresh install choose repair!!! it
will keep all programs and settings, will only install system files needed to
boot and run. If this doesnt work the only thing I have found is to install
fresh copy over top, will have to reinstall programs, but you dont have to
backup and format, then put everything back on from before (ie docs,
spreadsheets, etc...). hope this helps

 

[Alex H]

Hi and thanks foryour response

The problem is that it is trying to format the disk and the set up routine
is showing that there is a C partition but is does not recongise the format
#
Alex

 

[Guest]

when you click on fresh install, the next screen or two should ask you where
like c:\Microsoft Windows XP or something to that affect and you choose it.
The next screen should allow you to delete all the partions on the Hard drive
by pressing L. Delete all the partions and then create a new partion and
format using NTFS. If it doesnt let you there is a program you can download
on the net from like download.com or somewhere call delpar.exe. you can boot
from a dos disk or like a win98 bootup disk then (have delpar.exe on another
disk) put in the other disk with delpar.exe and run it. IT WILL DELETE ANY
PARTION KNOWN TO MAN....hope this helps