Windows will not boot; SYSTEM file corrupt or missing

[Sp33d]

Essentially, I turned on my computer, and after it went past the BIOS screen, it displayed the message "Windows cannot boot because the following file is missing or corrupted: WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM. I've tried using the recovery console, which hangs at the hard drive selection screen, and I've tried using Knoppix to replace the SYSTEM file, but the NTFS won't allow me to modify anything on the hard drive. Help would be very much appreciated.

 

[Nick5324]

Did you try a repair install, which is different than using the recovery console.

 

[cmdrmoocow]

If it hangs on the drive select screen, you might have a problem with the hard drive.

Go to the vendor's site; they'll usually have a diagnostic disk image that you can boot from to check the drive itself.

As for Knoppix, you might have to get a different NTFS driver that allows writing to NTFS drives.