Laptop problem

[Willbo]

My girlfriends got a Patriot 3005 laptop, few years old now, but its still chugging along for her needs. Yet tonight its come up with an error message before the XP load screen, it says;

"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
/WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/CONFIG/SYSTEM"

It says about using the repair function on the Setup CD, but I've had a look and not sure which option I'm supposed to use at the console to repair an installation.

Can anyone help me? I'm going to run a HDD diag test in the mean time to see if its working OK, as it was unable to load the DIR command at the repair console C: prompt and it said there was an error on the volume when I used the CHKDSK command.

 

[IAmATeaf]

You'll have to do either a repair or re-install to fix the above.

If you do a google you'll find advice on how to recover but I've found from personal experience that unless you have a backup of the missing/corrupt file then it'll all be a waste of time.

EDIT: If you can run chkdsk try chkdsk /r to detect and repair any bad sectors.