Associate
- Joined
- 2 Mar 2004
- Posts
- 222
- Location
- North London
Hello. Pc was rebooting itself upon system start/desktop loading for 2 weeks with occasional blue screen errors.
Last week upon desktop loading the screen flashed black and reappeared again several times before self rebooting. Upon reboot it displayed:
Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM. You can attempt to repair this file by starting windows setup using the original setup Cd-Rom. Select 'r' at the first screen to start repair.
At this point i inserted the windows CD and hit 'r' to repair it put me into a DOS i selected 1:\Cwindows as that was the only option i had to repair but it didnt do anything so i then loaded the windows CD once again and hit "Setup windows Xp" rather then repair on the selected partition and then selected repair afterwards that way. It worked and repaired and loaded to desktop fine.
I was using the pc for 7-10 days normally before i decided to buy a Lite-On external DvD/Cd-RW burner i installed it and then burnt some menial files before going to bed. When i awoke today the system loaded to desktop and then started flashing to black screen again and rebooted giving the same error as before.
I inserted the windows CD to repair, selected "set up windows xp" as the DOS repair wouldnt initiate again and it said to delete or create or setup on a partition but no option to repair like last time.
239367 MB Disk 0 at ID 0 on bus 0 onatapi [MBR]
C: Partition1 [NTFS] 239359MB
(213757 MB Free)
Unpartitioned space 8MB.
What does this mean? My hard drive is empty? How so if i have not formatted maybe its just an error? What do i do from here to repair as i must recover my information as i had extremely important documents on it
. Formatting isnt an option how do i recover my HD, what has happened.
P.s it mentioned a folder exists that may contain a windows installation when i selected to format. Also how do i repair from DOS if everytime i select 1 as the drive to repair it doesnt do anything and eventually i have to exit. Has my HD failed and what options do i have?
thanks guys.
Last week upon desktop loading the screen flashed black and reappeared again several times before self rebooting. Upon reboot it displayed:
Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM. You can attempt to repair this file by starting windows setup using the original setup Cd-Rom. Select 'r' at the first screen to start repair.
At this point i inserted the windows CD and hit 'r' to repair it put me into a DOS i selected 1:\Cwindows as that was the only option i had to repair but it didnt do anything so i then loaded the windows CD once again and hit "Setup windows Xp" rather then repair on the selected partition and then selected repair afterwards that way. It worked and repaired and loaded to desktop fine.
I was using the pc for 7-10 days normally before i decided to buy a Lite-On external DvD/Cd-RW burner i installed it and then burnt some menial files before going to bed. When i awoke today the system loaded to desktop and then started flashing to black screen again and rebooted giving the same error as before.
I inserted the windows CD to repair, selected "set up windows xp" as the DOS repair wouldnt initiate again and it said to delete or create or setup on a partition but no option to repair like last time.
239367 MB Disk 0 at ID 0 on bus 0 onatapi [MBR]
C: Partition1 [NTFS] 239359MB
(213757 MB Free)
Unpartitioned space 8MB.
What does this mean? My hard drive is empty? How so if i have not formatted maybe its just an error? What do i do from here to repair as i must recover my information as i had extremely important documents on it

P.s it mentioned a folder exists that may contain a windows installation when i selected to format. Also how do i repair from DOS if everytime i select 1 as the drive to repair it doesnt do anything and eventually i have to exit. Has my HD failed and what options do i have?
thanks guys.