XP has gone insane, and it's time to take her out.

[Huzzah]

Here's my problem in a nutshell: Was forced to restart my (main) computer earlier today. Upon XP Pro boot, I got the message " Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM".

Doing some research this afternoon on this secondary computer, I came across the Microsoft Article "How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting".

I booted into repair mode from my XP CD and followed the instructions, copying repair files to my windows\system32\config folder. Upon reboot my computer now gets stuck in a reboot loop. Doing a "chkdsk /r" tells me "The volume appears to have one or more unrecoverable problems". And even trying to look at the second partition on the HD (D:\) tells me "An error occurred during directory enumeration."

At this point it looks like a reinstall of XP is in order. HOWEVER I have important data on C: and D: that I need to recover. I also have a second HD with one partition - "E:\".

What's the best way to proceed from here? Should I create a new temporary partition on the first HD, install XP there, copy over the important data to the new partition and then remove the old partitions? If i just reinstall XP on the C: partition, will I lose data that's already there?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[karstenanderson]

*as long as you don't choose to have xp setup format your drives you won't lose anything.* there's an option to keep file systems intact, choose that one. if your old windows was installed to /WINDOWS, install your new copy to a different directory, say /WINXP or something. once your're up and running just delete your old /WINDOWS directory.

and don't worry, that repair crap rarely works. reinstalls are usually the better way to go

good luck.

 

[Huzzah]

Ok, I've gone ahead and followed your advice as far as reinstalling to a diff. folder name. Thanks.

The big issue now is the fact that windows repair console can't view the D: drive, with the error message given above. Also in the XP setup process, when it came time to choose the partition to install XP to, the D: partition showed as a partition, but the setup couldn't tell the disk format or the volume name, and claimed that every meg was available. Does this mean that trying to recover data on that is a lost cause?

 

[karstenanderson]

are your c: and d: drives different physical discs or are they two different partitions on the same hard drive? was your windows installed on d: before? install it on c: now. just dont let it change the filesystem type or reformat.

 

[karstenanderson]

ok nevermind i see d: was a 2nd partition. just leave it alone for now and install to c: you can worry about recovery/whatnot later.

 

[jamesbond007]

Huzzah, are you sure your HDD isn't going bad? Corruption of random files is one of the first signs. Personally, I'd take any important information off there, if you can, and back it up.

You can copy the file using the recovery console from an equivalently-patched machine, if available. Otherwise, I usually just format the drive.