Windows xp boot problems

[imported_The King]

My friend has a computer which he has bought from futureshop a little while back. He was opening a .rar file and chose to open all of the files inside of it at once. Needless to say, there were a ton of windows that popped up and windows froze. He shut of the power at the power switch and turned it off. Now when he tries to boot his computer, he gets the error saying that windows wasn't shut down properly and is given the list of safe mode options and such. No matter what option he chooses (and he has tried all of them), windows will show the loading screen for a bit, and then go back to this screen, no matter what he does. I figure the registry is shot and I was going to try this help document:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307545

The only thing is, I don't actually know if it is the registry. Also, it says in that support document above that this method should not be used on an OEM installed OS. I have faced facts, I will probably have to format, but there is a lot of important information on there that he would like to have. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[thescreensavers]

put hte xp cd in and repair see if that works

pop in cd let it boot and load it stuff up then say u want to install windows then some ware there it will say to repair windows u select the partition and hit R and I think that the right key it will look like its reinstalling windows but it is not jsut reinstalling the windows folder ok

 

[imported_The King]

Alright, I will, but I have had some bad experiences with repair installs in the past. last time I did it, the windows loading screen woul show up for a split second, and then the computer would restart. Anyways, I am willing to do anything just to get this computer to boot. Anyone else have any other ideas that could also work?

 

[Smilin]

BEFORE you do a repair install...

Drop to recovery console (boot to CD, hit R at first screen) and run "chkdsk /p".

There is a good chance you just have some minor filesystem corruption from a dirty shutdown.

If you are getting the error in the "more information" section in that KB, follow the KB to get fixed.