Trying to get my OS installed again. Please help.

[duwaal]

Lets see, I'm not sure how exactly but lately my computer has been giving me a lot of BSOD's. It was all fine except the annoyingness of having to reboot randomly. However just today it BSOD'd and when trying to boot up I got an error like: "Windows can not start up because the following file is corrupt or missing: c:\windows\system32\config\system" Then it told me to insert the OS cd and go to repair screen.

Well, I went on google and put the exact error in and got some results. All of which I tried, and I'm finally left no where. At this point my PC has been formatted, but the OS will not install.

I have it as boot to CD, so when it prompts to boot from CD I hit a key, and then hit enter to set up windows. Now it lets me choose which partition or something to create it on, or delete current ones...well I've deleted the current one and then hit to setup on the raw space.

After it finished formatting it said the computer needed to reboot, and upon rebooting setup for XP would continue. However upon reboot it simply gives me the same old error as before.

Does that mean there is a problem with my OS cd? Or what? If it is my cd is there any place I can download XP? I have my cdkey so its not like I'm stealing. Or what should I do?

If you took the time to read this thanks, if you need more information just let me know. Hopefully I can straighten this out.

 

[Tyler1989]

Did you format it with NTFS? Not fast format.

 

[TheHeadFL]

If you are BSOD'ing on a fresh install or during setup, you may have a problem with a piece of hardware. First I'd suspect the hard drive, then memory/CPU/mobo/etc.

 

[duwaal]

Did you format it with NTFS? Not fast format.

I have actually done it both ways with the same result.

If you are BSOD'ing on a fresh install or during setup, you may have a problem with a piece of hardware. First I'd suspect the hard drive, then memory/CPU/mobo/etc.

I was BSODing before which is what eventually caused me to format and try and reinstall. While in setup or anything I havn't BSOD'd yet.

 

[EricB]

TheHeadFL hit on the nose.
but he left out 1 thing your will get this error if something was left in the mbr, such as an activation crack that fail, trying to reinstall sp1 fresh over sp2, etc.

in that case use powermax in my sig to wipe the harddrive. then reinstall windows

you can also use powermax to test your hard drive if the above doesn't apply to you. download memtest to test your ram.

also try setting your bios to the defaults too. something might got set wrong like video ram caching

 

[duwaal]

Ok, I just reset the bios to default, and am trying again. If it doesn't work I will try the powermax cd. I'll post back with results.

 

[Law]

I had this same problem with a customer laptop, I try the XP cd to repair it but it just freeze the computer. I assume it was a harddrive failure, maybe part of the sector might be bad. So I try again to comfirm this by reinstalling his XP, it freeze again when it was searching for previous install OS.

Since the laptop didn't have a floopy drive, I wanted to use 2000 cd to delete the partition. To my suprise it work and I was able to reinstall XP for the customer.

It was strange how I couldn't delete the partition with the XP cd but I could with the 2000.

 

[duwaal]

Well powermax didn't work, and resetting BIOS didn't work. I plan to take it to a place near my house to see if they can fix it. Don't have any other versions of windows to try, although thanks for the tip Law.