Missing or Corrupt System Files for Win2K

[dbz007]

Hey guys,

We have a Dell laptop with Win2K on it that started acting up a few days ago. It won't boot into windows or even safe mode. It's giving me this error:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

When I boot in safe mode it'll stop right after it loads WINNT\SYSTEM32\config\system.log, then it'll give me that error from above.
It'll then tell me I can attempt to repair the file with original windows setup disk. We can't find the disk right now since we're cleaning up the place a bit for the new year.
There's a lot of important files on the laptop that we still need so reformatting is not an option right now.

Do you guys think once we find the win2k cd, this problem is actually fixable or are we screwed?
We would really prefer if we could fix it as there's some programs on the hard drive that took a long time to set up in the first place & would take hours again to do.

For the time being, we're probably just going to pull the hard drive from the laptop, use a 40pin to 44pin ide adapter, plug it into a desktop and just backup the entire drive.

Any thoughts, suggestions , & advice would greatly be appreciated.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Pull the hard drive, connect it to another computer DO A BACKUP, format, reinstall. Simple as pie.

You might be able to save it, but nothing should take hours to setup really. Especially if you know what you did last time. Ghost is a great thing too.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You could always do a parallel OS install on the same hardware, and then copy over the SYSTEM hive.

 

[xpoptical]

when some files are corrupt oon XP i use the CHKDSK command
in structure XP and 2000 are pretty much the same
it may work.. give it a try