Repairing corrupted file

NotAGolf

NotAGolf

NotAGolf

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I'm trying to fix my mates laptop, I think I've done it properly but I just want to check with you guys.

Basically it wouldnt boot up, it gave a BSOD everytime it booted up, something along the lines of:
Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SOFTWARE

I was about to follow this microsoft guide on fixing it but first I thought I'd run chkdisk /r to see if that sorted it so I wacked in the XP cd and used the recovery console to run it and hey presto it boots!

Now my question is, is this problem liking to happen again? Should I still follow the guide above or is it all sorted now?

Thanks.
 
sometimes it happens for 'no reason' as in no hardware problems, or a slight ghost in the machine

get him to back up his data and should be ok
 
i've had this happen on my pc about 5 years ago (and tons in work), the problem only returned on one of the drives i fixed

the one i had in my pc now lives in my sister's house, no problems :)
 
Sorry to resurect an ancient thread but the same thing has happened again. It's the same laptop in question. I tried running chkdsk which worked before but this time no such luck. So I have a couple of questions:

1. Is this tutorial likely to fix the problem?

2. How likely is it that this procedure will lose data stored on the hard-drive?

3. Do I have any other options? (Can't really format as my mate needs the data on it)

Thanks for any advice.
 
Mpledge, that is the standard way of recovering from corrupted hive file failure, give it a go, you wont lose anything. You could always plug your drive into another pc and copy your documents and then reinstall windows back on the laptop.
 
Just put his HDD in your PC as a slave and pull everything you need from it, fresh format will then sort it out, assuming the drive isn't dying that is.
 
OK thanks guys. I've just tried going throught the steps but when putting in the command: "copy c:\windows\repair\system c:\windows\system32\config\system"
It says it cannot find the file specified.

Any other ideas? Has this drive just had it?

Thanks.
 
Had this happen on a friends pc, spent days working through all the fixes on the web etc and got nowhere. I replaced the psu because it was dying, but the hard drive did appear to be the cause of this problem.

How much memory does he have in the laptop? If it's an old laptop with say 256mb running xp the hard drive will be used as virtual memory when windows exceeds 256mb and this will make the hard drive work a lot more than it should do.
 
Pretty certain I typed system without the dot.

I dont know how much memory it has on it. I would have a guess at 512MB but it could be 256MB, it's a few years old now so I doubt it's anything more than 512.

What about telling him to get one of those laptop hard drive enclosures that have a usb connection so you can use at like an external harddrive to get all the data off?
 
You have to boot from your XP CD and go into the recovery console.

May also be worth doing a chkdsk /r from within the recovery console first.

EDIT: Just fully read the P and that's the procedure you've used. If it works, great and if there was a reasonable explanation
for it happening e.g. powering the machine down suddenly then it's probably unlikely to happen again. However if not it could
be an early sign that your mates hard disk is on its way out.
 
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