Major XP Problem

[richard burton]

Can anyone offer advice on a problem I have with XP Home? It refused to boot, a screen came up to tell me windows/system32/config/systems was missing. I had to format it and reload XP Home. All was well for a day or two, then it failed again. I have formatted it four times now, could it be a virus in the Bios, or is my hard drive scrap?
R B.

[Tom Diemer]

Richard, something is corrupting your registry files. It's hard to say what's doing it, perhaps an unstable or incompatable driver? Do you have a scanner or camera that could use software that isn't compatable with XP? It could be something like bad memory or hard drive corrupting the data. Maybe a hardware conflict due to something being set wrong in the bios. Personally I haven't heard of a BIOS virus since CIH quite a few years ago. ?

If you don't have service pack 1 for XP, be sure to get it first thing after you get it running. Early on there were some issues with XP corrupting the registy, but SP1 resolved most of that.

Something to try, no promise it will work.

Boot your system with the Windows XP Install CD, let the system boot into the Setup. Once in the Setup, choose to run the Recovery Console.

You will now be presented with a screen similar to good old DOS.

First, we will recover the System Hive.

Now, type in the following commands with pressing Enter after each line.

md tmp
copy C:\windows\system32\config\system C:\windows\tmp\system.bak
delete C:\windows\system32\config\system
copy C:\windows\repair\system C:\windows\system32\config\system

Be very careful when you are typing in these commands, one wrong move, and you know, broken Windows XP.

Also, change the C in the commands to whatever your Windows XP drive letter is.

Attempt to boot the system, if it doesn't boot, get back into the Recovery Console and do the following commands.

md tmp
copy C:\windows\system32\config\software C:\windows\tmp\software.bak
delete C:\windows\system32\config\software
copy C:\windows\repair\software C:\windows\system32\config\software

The full step by step instructions are here: You might want to print this out, there is a lot to it.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545

and here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=318159

Hope this helps. It's pretty complicated to follow for sure.<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Tom Diemer on 11 August 2004 at 05:15 PM.]</p></FONT>

[Les Pierce]

I'm betting on a failing hard drive.

Les

[Ricky Davis]

It's the Mother board.

[Lou[NE]]

How about a virus in the master boot record? Try a reformat, then use the command

format /mbr

to rewrite the master boot record.<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Lou[NE] on 12 August 2004 at 08:10 AM.]</p></FONT>

[richard burton]

Thanks everyone, I have installed another hard drive and so far all is well. (Famous last words!)
R B.