Soldato
- Joined
- 17 Apr 2006
- Posts
- 3,165
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- 3rd rock...
The uber-geeks on here will have a giggle over this one I know 
but I had to stick this on here in case someone else in the same situation comes across this thread.
Came back from work yesterday and turned on the PC. Got a black screen with this on it:
Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM
I was like
Panic stations, all hands on deck, sound the alarm, dive dive dive etc.
Fortunately the gf has her own PC so performed some frantic searches online for this error. Got results to tons of support including the ol' MS support page:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545
All the other resources I found for this error said something similar to what I found in the MS page above. Pretty long drawn-out stuff, I was dreading it.
I had all my important stuff backed up to a 250GB external HDD but I hadnt backed up stuff *recently* so I was flapping.
Ran a diagnositic on the hard drive and got this:
Error Code = 7 (Read Error)
I was like "I only got the thing in October 2005, surely the HDD cant be failing!"
Anyways I bit down and pulled up the support page on the GFs LCD and got ready to go thru the process.
Then I remembered this command: chkdsk /r
Chucked in the Windows XP disk that came with the PC, got to Recovery Console, typed in: chkdsk /r
It found some errors and fixed them.
Re-booted the PC....and it worked
The problem was fixed in about 5 minutes.
What struck me was that none of those websites I found mentioned this. So to another rookie like me who finds himself/herself in this situation - I hope you have come across this thread. Good old checkdisk saved the day!
One of those moments in computing that shows that you gotta try the real simple stuff first! (Remember the classic "I got no sound from my PC!", running all the diagnostics, checking Device Manager etc....then finding the cord unplugged....)
but I had to stick this on here in case someone else in the same situation comes across this thread.Came back from work yesterday and turned on the PC. Got a black screen with this on it:
Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM
I was like
Panic stations, all hands on deck, sound the alarm, dive dive dive etc.
Fortunately the gf has her own PC so performed some frantic searches online for this error. Got results to tons of support including the ol' MS support page:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545
All the other resources I found for this error said something similar to what I found in the MS page above. Pretty long drawn-out stuff, I was dreading it.
I had all my important stuff backed up to a 250GB external HDD but I hadnt backed up stuff *recently* so I was flapping.
Ran a diagnositic on the hard drive and got this:
Error Code = 7 (Read Error)
I was like "I only got the thing in October 2005, surely the HDD cant be failing!"
Anyways I bit down and pulled up the support page on the GFs LCD and got ready to go thru the process.
Then I remembered this command: chkdsk /r
Chucked in the Windows XP disk that came with the PC, got to Recovery Console, typed in: chkdsk /r
It found some errors and fixed them.
Re-booted the PC....and it worked
The problem was fixed in about 5 minutes.
What struck me was that none of those websites I found mentioned this. So to another rookie like me who finds himself/herself in this situation - I hope you have come across this thread. Good old checkdisk saved the day!
One of those moments in computing that shows that you gotta try the real simple stuff first! (Remember the classic "I got no sound from my PC!", running all the diagnostics, checking Device Manager etc....then finding the cord unplugged....)
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