Windows has killed itself AGAIN!

[sjt269]

Turned the PC on earlier, played some games, and all was well. I figured I'd better make a start on setting up a new wireless network, so I turned the PC off and went to plug in the network card. Then I read the instructions, and saw that actually I had to install the software first. So, without having touched the innards of the PC, I turned the PC back on again, only to be confronted by an error message screen.


'C:\windows\system32\config\system' is apparently missing or corrupt. How, I don't know. It advises me to use the recovery console to repair the file, but I can't for the life of me figure out exactly how I'm meant to repair it via the recovery console.

Any ideas? I tried a few things and screwed up the PC even further, but I can fix what I've done so long as I get this corrupt file back.


This is the third time in a space of weeks that bits of my PC have become 'corrupt' for no reason whatsoever, and I'm getting slightly suspicious/worried that something's wrong with it.



Thanks in advance
tTz

 

[sjt269]

I know, but the HDD is only a year old, and it's a good make (Hitachi). I know that's no guarantee of longevity though, so I'm definitely going to beg, borrow or steal to get another HDD to make some pretty hefty backups of the stuff I've got just now though...think I may have an old unformatted 10Gb drive in a cupboard somewhere. I've been having really bad luck with hard drives for the last year or so.

But at the moment, getting back into the PC is my priority, so I'll concentrate on backups after I've got something to back up.

 

[sjt269]

Oh, so the recovery console thingy is the wrong one to use then? Looking at the page you linked to now, I'll give it a go and report back (hopefully from my own PC!).

 

[sjt269]

Meh. I tried the repair reinstall thing, and it gets as far as rebooting to finish the reinstall before it says something along the lines of 'File "asms" is needed from the XP Home Edition CD' and asks me to type in the path to the file. I've tried that, but every time I click 'Ok' absolutely nothing happens. I've tried a dozen different variations using capital letters etc, and changing the path from globalroot\device\cdrom1\I386 that it sets to as default to E:\I386 and similar things, but still nothing happens.

Help me out here guys, there's stuff on this PC I really need access to pretty sharpish.

 

[sjt269]

Is that the only option?


I can do it, but it involves me stealing my brother's PC for a while, and he'll not thank me for it. Addiction to evilbay.


Ach, I might as well...I suppose I can take it for a while before he goes into withdrawal symptoms, and I'll be finished before he goes cold turkey. Dunno how long it'll take to copy all my files across (there are a lot of them) but if it's my only option, then it's my only option. I'll count myself lucky if I get the files back, no matter how tortous the process of recovery might be.

 

[sjt269]

Option 2 - Do a full installation but don't format your drive.

Option 2 will delete your Windows directory and then install Windows again leaving all your files intact as long as you didn't save them in the Windows directory.

Ah, thought that was Step 1 and Step 2 rather than seperate options.

I've just begun the backup process onto my brother's PC (he's away out playing golf, so I've got it for the night, but Doctor Who is coming on soon, and I can't miss that!) which is going to take quite a while. I'm putting everything in a passworded rar file (don't want him snooping in my files, plus I think it'll be easier to manage as a .rar than as thousands of seperate files) just now. Later on, I'll reinstall without formatting (I'm sure I tried that before and it wiped all the files, but if I've got the backup, then I figure I'll be safe enough trying it) and see what happens.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

What sort of system have you got? I used to get this regularly on my old Iwill KK266 mobo with a 1.3GHz athlon, never managed to solve why it was doing it and got rid of the system in the end.

It's a Pentium 4 2.2Ghz Northwood on an Asus P4S533 motherboard, and damn, I'm impressed I remembered that without looking it up.

As you can tell, it's an old-ish system, so I'll be upgrading it later on this year (finances allowing) so I'll hopefully leave problems like this behind. I dunno what's causing this, or how to put an end to it, so I'll just be thankful I can manage to keep my files.


30 mins to go on the backup, apparently. That means I can give my brother his PC back before he gets back from the golf, reinstall Windows on mine, then steal his PC back again tomorrow when he's golfing again (team match) and get all my files back, with minimal inconvenience to him. I, on the other hand, am going to lose valuable revision time. Meh. Can't be helped, I suppose.


Thanks - I'll report back if it all goes smoothly. If it doesn't, I might just throw myself in front of a train and end it all, so if you don't hear from me again, you'll know it didn't work.

 

[sjt269]

30 mins to go on the backup, apparently.

Hours. 30 hours.


Need to trim it down a little, methinks.



Or...copy my brother's System files onto my hard drive? Worth a try, I reckon. I'll give it a go.



:edit:

Well that bright idea didn't work...can't copy system files, because they're in use by the system.

 

[sjt269]

Just run chkdsk.

Oh give me some credit, I'm not stupid, I tried that.

Needless to say, it didn't actually work.


Neither did the backups onto the other PC, it was taking too long...my fault for trying to put it all in a .rar file, I think. I set up a small 8Gb HDD in my PC, installed Windows, and ran my old HDD as a slave drive, and I've got some of my stuff backed up. If I reinstall and lose everything, then I'll end up losing most of my photos still, since the HDD was too small to fit the photos on as well.

Thanks for the link firewallblocked, I'm looking at it now.

 

[sjt269]

Tried the corrupt registry recovery guide from a few posts up, but it's not working. I got a little bit through it, then realised I could use a .txt file to go through all the commands for me, to save me typing each one out (I'm lazy, so sue me) for several parts of the guide, so I went and got the .txt file and put it onto the HDD, and now when I boot into the recovery console, it's asking for an Administrator password. The thing is, it's never done this before, and there is no password. Leaving it blank, or just pressing space, gives me an invalid password error, and I've tried anything I'd have made up myself. It's a phantom password.




Norton Ghost, do I need to buy that? I'll away and check it out on their website, ta.


:edit:

£40 for Norton Ghost, and no way to borrow it from anyone (no one I know has it, afaik) or trial it first. For £40, I'd be better off buying a new HDD, installing Windows onto it, backing up my data, formatting the current HDD, and ending up with twice the space and all the data.

That plan had already ocurred to me, but unfortunately the Edinburgh marathon is on today, so a lot of roads are closed, so a journey to purple-shirt-land could take a very long time, and buying from OcUk won't get me anything before about Thursday.

Gah. I hate computers sometimes.

 

[sjt269]

I have absolutely no idea how, but I've managed to get the hard drive to such a state that the entire file system is corrupt, and other PCs can't read it. To the best of my knowledge, I've done nothing to the file system between having it in this PC, putting it in mine and getting locked out of the recovery console, and then putting it back in here...there was no change made to the file system, but nothing recognises it. Even the Windows Recovery Install doesn't see a Windows install on the disc, and it needs to totally format it to get anywhere with it.


Also, as an added bonus on my lucky day, the backup hard drive has managed to lose a .dll file from the system32 folder, and now I can't get that one to work either (though I'm hoping I'll be able to get it back eventually, I'm off to try it now). I can't see any way out of this that doesn't involve me losing all my photos, recordings, etc etc...it's goodbye 120Gb of data, I think. Two hard drives corrupt, both running on the same hardware...maybe it's not a hard drive problem after all. Or maybe I'm just an idiot who kills everything he touches, I don't know. Either way, it's not good.

I'm looking at that link now dmpoole, I'm just not too optimistic about it doing anything if the whole file system is corrupt. I'll see what it does and maybe give it a go if it looks vaguely promising.

 

[sjt269]

Install windows on another partition, thats what I did.

I tried that, but it keeps trying to format drive C, even though I tell it to format parition F only, which sounds like it would wipe the whole drive clear of data.

 

[sjt269]

Hurrah for the triple post...



Anyway, got the backup hard drive working again (on it now). Funny thing happened when I put my dead drive back into my brother's PC to try to copy it...Windows XP chkdsk kicked in right at startup, which it never did any of the other times I tried it in his PC (and which I'd done several times myself via the recovery console) and tried to fix the disk.

So, the hard drive is undergoing a pretty rigorous checkdisk scan...Windows went right through and deleted a whole lot of corrupt stuff (including some mp3s ripped from CDs, I noticed, so who knows what else I've now lost) and has been trying to repair the hard drive, I think. The thing is, for the last hour, it's been showing the same message: 'Inserting an index entry in index $0 for file 659'.

The message is flashing slightly at the bottom of the screen, like more indexes are being created constantly, but it's been doing it for roundabout an hour, which seems like an awful long time. I thought it was maybe re-indexing the entire hard drive or something, but I'm a little unsure if the PC is working, or if it's crashed. I don't want to power it down, because powering down during a chkdsk can cause bad things to happen.

 

[sjt269]

I was going to do that, except for the following reasons:

1) Would take bloody ages.

2) Having to keep an eye on the PC all the time to keep switching DVDs would annoy me.

3) He doesn't have a DVDRW.



My DVDRW on my PC is apparently (so says the LiteOn support staff who can't type proper English) broken and should be returned, since it can't actually burn DVDs, so I'd need to wander out and buy a new one in order for that plan to work. I've got DVDRs though, plenty of 'em, just nothing to burn!



PC seems to still be stuck on the same chkdsk thing. I haven't tried to restart or anything in case it's doing exactly what it's meant to be doing.

 

[sjt269]

How much data are talking about compressing? My machine can compress about 4gb/hour with Winace (and Winace is slooowww). 7-Zip should be able to knock through a DVD much quicker.

There's about 120Gb on the drive, and maybe 30Gb 'I'd really like to save', and another 20Gb 'can't-live-without' data on it. That's a guess, so it may be a little on the high side.

Chkdsk...hmm...give it until 3, before hitting the power button, TBH.

My brother is away out golfing til about 8 tonight, so I've got the PC til then to play about with. I was going to leave it a little longer, but I shall assume you know what you're on about.

As for your DVD writer. I think your motherboard is up the swannie, not the drives - try your DVD writer in your brother's machine. For the sake of a 5 minute swap over, I'd do it.

Y'think?

I was going to get a new machine at the end of the year, but I'll be lucky if this one manages to last that long.


I'll give the DVDRW in his PC a go. I'm on exam leave atm, so I can steal his PC tomorrow/midweek to burn the stuff to DVDs, assuming I can regain access to the hard drive if chkdsk fixes the corrupt-ness of it.



:edit:

chkdsk lives! It's now replacing invalid security files, or something like that.

 

[sjt269]

Heh, thanks for that. Should take me maybe 2 hours to back up a reasonable amount of stuff (or to compress it, anyway) that I can burn to disc and cherish forever.


The PC is still replacing the invalid security files, its done about 90000 so far and it's showing no sign of stopping.



What's a recovery record? It sounds like something I should already know, but I can't quite figure out what.

 

[sjt269]

In the meantime, get that old 10gb drive in your machine, install XP and Nero on it in any old fashion - then get ready to burn.

Drive is in and installed, but the DVDRW doesn't burn!


Tis going in the other PC once chkdsk is done, then it'll be time to burn.

 

[sjt269]

Hitachi really isn't a good make.. i've have had 3 Hitachi hdds and all 3 broke within 7-8months

This is my second one Hitachi, and I've had quite a few problems with it, but almost all the problems have stemmed from me being stupid rather than from it being mechanically faulty. The first one reached the end of it's lifespan after 6 or 7 years, so I can't complain about that one not doing its job (though I wish it had let me know before it packed in - I couldn've backed it up!).


I've got no grudge against Hitachi, I've just been unlucky/an idiot. I think luck is what it comes down to in the end...some people just get good luck, and some get bad.

 

[sjt269]

Right, the drive is un-corrupt and I can access it as a slave drive once more. Can't do a repair install of Windows, it throws up an error about some password not being what Windows expects it to be - I haven't set any passwords, so I dunno what that's about.

Not got time to get everything packed away in archives tonight, but I'll do it either tomorrow or on Tuesday (got an exam Tuesday morning, so might need tomorrow for revision...don't want to be running to the PC every 20 mins to check on it). After that, I'll get everything burned to DVD if I can get the drive working, then format the HDD and do a clean install of XP.

I'm still concerned about the DVDRW not working, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. If it turns out that I really do need a new one, then I might just buy a new HDD and keep the current one as a slave. £20 for a new DVDRW, or £30-40 for a new hard drive, where I end up with more space, all my files, and less all round hassle. I'll see what happens, and I'll probably post back here after I've done/not done whatever I decide to do.

Thanks for all the help, guys.

 

[sjt269]

Any chance of the exact message (or screenshot/photo showing it), when you put the 'wrong' admin password in?

In the recovery console, it just says 'incorrent password' and I get 3 chances to enter it correctly.

With the repair install, I didn't have to enter anything. Windows got to the stage where it restarted the PC to complete the installation from within Windows itself, but when the system rebooted, I just got a white cursor on a black background, then an error box naming a .dll file (I think) that Windows didn't know the password to. I can go photograph that error message, I'll do it just now.

The dead HDD is back in my machine, as a slave drive for now. All the files are there, I just haven't got the registry entries to run some of the programs and games, but I can live with that. For a while, at least.

 

[sjt269]

That's the message. It only appears on screen for a few seconds before disappearing, then the PC restarts itself. Sorry its such a bad image, I went to take it again to try to get a better one, but the message only just flashed up, and I missed it.


:edit:

Just Googles lsass.exe and it tells me that that error message could be pointing towards a virus, apparently...Active Virus Shield never picked up anything.

That was just one result though, I'll keep looking.

:edit2:

Apparently there's lsass.exe (lower case L) and Isass.exe (upper case I), and the I one is a virus, so maybe this isn't a virus I'm looking at here. Hope not. No way I can tell, really.