SYSTEM file corrupt or missing

Hello,
First of all, thank you in advance for any help all of you can provide me.

My brother's computer kinda crashed yesterday. When starting up normally, he's getting the following message:
---------
Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:

\windows\system32\config\system

You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows setup using the original setup CD-ROM. Select "r" at the first screen to start repair.
---------

Here's what we've tried so far with no luck:

-- called Dell support
-- tried going into the "Last Good Known Menu" option
-- hit F8 to go into the advanced setup options, selected "safe mode with command prompt "
-- inserted the "Operating System Reinstallation CD-Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition including Service Pack 1A" CD

When trying to go into safe mode with command prompt, we then get a menu to select the OS, which is only Windows XP Home Edition. We select it, and then it goes back to the same error.

Same thing when selecting any of the advanced menu options (safe mode, normal mode, etc...)

The Dell people mentioned that his computer and files are totally gone and they'd have to pretty much format the whole drive. That's BS. Worst came to worse, I could always pop his drive into my system and copy everything over to my drive.

I took a look a my system (Win2000) under the same directory and noticed that I too have a "SYSTEM" file, and a "SYSTEM.ALT" file. Both files are the same size/date.

What I'm thinking is that his SYSTEM file is bad. And what I was hoping to do was to somehow get into command mode, go to that directory, and then copy the SYSTEM.ALT file to SYSTEM, and that would take care of it.

Anybody have any ideas?

Here are his specs:

Dell Dimension 8400
1 GB RAM
150 GB HD
DVD-ROM
CD-RW
Windows XP Home Edition

Once again, thank you in advance for any help you can provide !!!!

Paul

 

I had exactly the same error. There was not a lot of good news I am afraid, the only good news is that Dell are incorrect - his files will still be there.

This is a problem covered on the MS website. You need to use the repair console to copy files which allow you to boot the machine up. This basically creates a new copy of the registry which means you will not be back to where you were before. When it boots you will have access to your files but almost nothing worked for me and all drivers and profiles will be gone. All of your restore points will be inaccessible too as the Registry and therefore Windows does not know they exist. My attemt to access these failed and I had to format and reinstall XP. Unfortunately my CD Burning Software did not work so I could not copy files to disk - I had to buy a new hard drive to install XP and copy the files HDD to HDD later.

One of the problems is that on top of most programs not working (including all MS Office apps) the installer also did not work so I could not even install or re-install anything.

I hope you have better luck than I did, get the instrustions from MS website and give it a try. They do say the fixes sometimes work.....

 

The afore mentioned MS KB article is here.