XP won't repair or reinstall

[Gary S. Botticello]

2nd post on this;

I have an out of state friend who has a Gateway which
came with Win98 SE. 6 months ago he upgraded to XP Home,
and up until two weeks ago everything was fine. His son
apparently downloaded a 'jpeg' file which he was using as
his desktop wallpaper. When my friend went to delete
this file, it wouldn't let him and the system 'froze'.
He shut down and now it won't re-boot anymore. He keeps
getting a message about missing files in the
windows/system32/config folder. I tried walking him
through the recovery console function, but every time he
selects either to repair the existing install or new
install he gets a black screen with a message stating
there is a hardware problem and windows will not continue
because of possible hardware damage. I have had him
remove all recently installed new hardware and return the
system to its original configuration with no luck. He is
shipping the box to me to see if I can recover it for
him. I seem to remember something in an article about
this problem which indicated there was a log file created
during the install process which stored previous install
attemp info. Any subsequent install attempts would look
at this file and not proceed any further. I think the
article said if one deleted this log file, a new install
would then be possible. Does anyone know the name of
this file, and where on the drive I should look for it.

Of course, he never made any backups, and is desperate to
recover some files on the drive if possible.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[Dan (Still going in circles)]

Here's a silly question for you. Have you run an "anti-virus" scan on
the system yet?

Dan (Still going in circles)

 

[Dan (Still going in circles)]

Did you ever get this fixed and if so, what did you do?

Dan (Still going in circles)