Here's the short and not-so sweet story. If there's information I don't provide here, please post and I'll clarify.
Ordered all the parts I needed for a new machine off newegg:
MSI K8N Neo4 mobo (nforce chipset for socket 939 proc)
AMD64 3000+ proc
1gig corsair ram
250gig WD SATA hard disk
sony oem dvd/rw
radeon 6800xl graphics card
etc.
Built the system, got everything squared away and seemed to be running fine. I had also ordered winXP with SP2 from newegg. Installed it and everything was cranking along quite well.
Apparently, there's a little utility with my graphics card that "in the case of a graphics crash, can reset the VPU and switch to software rendering to enable you to save your work and reboot." Sounds harmless enough... I let it install.
Go through installing all utilities I'll need, apps, copying old documents over, the whole whizbang. Everything seems to be going along just fine, until... all of a sudden an app has a graphics problem, artifacts all over the screen. I get a message saying the VPU has restarted - alright, that's helpful. Recommends I reboot. I close everything and turn off the system, then turn it back on.
Little problem suddenly became a big one.
"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\system32\config\SYSTEM". Ouch!
Have tried the recommended recovery console... it hangs when I select 1 as an option as the main operating system that I want to repair. It hangs when I boot from the XP SP2 CD and try to 'set up windows' when I get to the stage of "searching for previous versions of windows". This means I can't re-format, delete the partition, OR do any sort of repair.
... UPDATE ...
Found an old windows 98 boot cd which I used to boot it up and fdisk the HD, so that at least I now have unformatted unpartitioned space. I'm now in the process of partitioning/formatting using my XP SP2 cd, but my concern is... how can I prevent this happening again? Why would a key system file simply poof, vanish, in between shutdown of a machine and boot up? Especially when said machine is brand new, new parts, all untampered with, only a small amount of software on the machine anyway, and I've checked -all- cables and drivers to ensure that everything is hooked up correctly. Please help, I'll provide any info I can.
Thanks a million!
-Confused Adam in Colorado
Ordered all the parts I needed for a new machine off newegg:
MSI K8N Neo4 mobo (nforce chipset for socket 939 proc)
AMD64 3000+ proc
1gig corsair ram
250gig WD SATA hard disk
sony oem dvd/rw
radeon 6800xl graphics card
etc.
Built the system, got everything squared away and seemed to be running fine. I had also ordered winXP with SP2 from newegg. Installed it and everything was cranking along quite well.
Apparently, there's a little utility with my graphics card that "in the case of a graphics crash, can reset the VPU and switch to software rendering to enable you to save your work and reboot." Sounds harmless enough... I let it install.
Go through installing all utilities I'll need, apps, copying old documents over, the whole whizbang. Everything seems to be going along just fine, until... all of a sudden an app has a graphics problem, artifacts all over the screen. I get a message saying the VPU has restarted - alright, that's helpful. Recommends I reboot. I close everything and turn off the system, then turn it back on.
Little problem suddenly became a big one.
"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\system32\config\SYSTEM". Ouch!
Have tried the recommended recovery console... it hangs when I select 1 as an option as the main operating system that I want to repair. It hangs when I boot from the XP SP2 CD and try to 'set up windows' when I get to the stage of "searching for previous versions of windows". This means I can't re-format, delete the partition, OR do any sort of repair.
... UPDATE ...
Found an old windows 98 boot cd which I used to boot it up and fdisk the HD, so that at least I now have unformatted unpartitioned space. I'm now in the process of partitioning/formatting using my XP SP2 cd, but my concern is... how can I prevent this happening again? Why would a key system file simply poof, vanish, in between shutdown of a machine and boot up? Especially when said machine is brand new, new parts, all untampered with, only a small amount of software on the machine anyway, and I've checked -all- cables and drivers to ensure that everything is hooked up correctly. Please help, I'll provide any info I can.
Thanks a million!
-Confused Adam in Colorado
