Windows error: Windows\system32\config\system

[DarkS1d3]

Hey everyone,

So, I try to turn my pc on Saturday morning, and instead of loading normally, I get the message:
"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: windows\system32\config\system "

I googled this and found several helpful ideas, but so far none have worked. I've tried:
-disconnecting all peripherals and restarting
-loading xp cd from disk and running repair (chkdsk tells me my drives appear to have an unrecoverable error and does nothing even with /r and /p)

I'm really in a rut here as alot of school things were on this pc and I hope there is some way around reformatting. This just happened out of the blue too..

Any help is defintely appreciated.

 

[__Camouflage__]

Try a repair INSTALL, insert your XP CD, let it boot up, when it gets to "Install press enter" "repair press 'R'" press enter, then F8 (agree) and it will ask what you want to do, from there choose to repair the Windows version. See if that will help.

 

[DarkS1d3]

After I hit f8, it takes me to the available drive space screen showing the partitions, so I select the only one, and It never brings up a repair windows option, just goes straight to "Format with NTFS?"

This is getting me thinking that somehow windows is gone? ahh...please someone avert my fears..

 

[MrCoffee]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545/

good luck, I have done this myself previously, the scsi drive i had my OS on was failing and it corrupted the registry before I got a diagnostic code and RMA'd it.

 

[DarkS1d3]

Ah! thanks for the suggestion, but I've tried that. The thing is, I was never prompted for an administrator password, and when I try to type 'md tmp' for the first line, it just spits back "access is denied".

A friend suggested it might have been one of the hard drives failing, so I'll try getting a diagnostic and checking that.