\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM MISSING OR CORRUPT

Countrygirl,

I'm so sorry to hear about your son. I'm moving your post to the right forum, and I'll make sure you get some help. We'll do our best to save your pictures for you.

Thank you Sari I appreciate all your help.

Hello country girl...

My condolences on your loss.

Let's see if we can get your machine running for you. The first thing we need to try is to see if we can load the last working registry. You'll find the option to do this on the Advanced Boot Options screen...the same place you'll find the option for Safe Mode. Start the machine and tap the F8 key until you see the boot options, then use the arrow keys to select "Last known good configuration"...press "Enter" and see if the machine will boot to Windows.

Let me know what happens.

wannabe1

I tried f8 last known configuration it didn't work.

Have you tried the option for "Safe Mode with Command Prompt" from the Advanced Boot options? That will sometimes start when regular Safe Mode won't.

We're going to have to work our way to a command prompt to load an older copy of the registry. There are several ways to go about this...Safe Mode with a Command Prompt being the first and easiest to try.

See if you can get that to load and let me know what happens. If it hangs while loading files, please let me know what the last file in the list is.

It didn't work multidiskrdiskpartition(2)\WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe,hal.dll,KDCOM.DLL,BOOTVIDdll,config\system.log this is what I see on my screen with \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM after trying it.
Sorry the last file was multidiskrdiskpartition(2)\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM.LOG

Edited by country girl, 29 April 2009 - 07:34 PM.

Let me gather a little information about your machine before we move to the next step.

First, what kind of computer are we working on? Is it an OEM machine such as Dell, HP, Compaq, etc...? Having the make and model number of the machine may help.

Then, what disk are you using to access the repair function (where you press R)? Did the disk come with the machine or was it purchased separately?

It's a dell XPS 9P73L91 and the cd came with the machine. It is OPERATING SYSTEM already installed on my computer. It's a reinstallation DVD version 2005. By the way thank you for your time and help I appreciate it.

The Dell CD will give us a couple options that others don't...which is good. One of them is Recovery Console, which you tried unsuccessfully (where you pressed R)...which is not so good.

Does the machine you are using now have a CD burning drive and do you have burning software like Nero or Roxio installed? I'd like to make a different disk to use to access Recovery Console. It will require that you burn a disk as an ISO image...which requires the burning software. If you don't have such a program, there are free applications we can use.

I'm using my dell labtop XPS140 I have Roxio on it.

I'm not real familiar with Roxio, but it should have an option to burn an ISO image. I'm giving you a direct download link to an image file of Recovery Console. Save the file somewhere you can find it. Once it's downloaded, burn the file as an ISO image and we'll see if we can boot the broken machine with it and access Recovery Console. If this doesn't work, we still have one very good option left using your Dell CD.

Download RC.iso and burn it to a cd as an ISO image.

If Roxio has trouble burning this disk or does not have the capability for burning ISO image files, let me know and I'll provide a link to a free program to burn the disk with.

Once burned, see if you can boot the machine with it and access Recovery Console by pressing the R key on the Welcome to Setup screen.

I down loaded the link. Do I use a cd-write or dvd -r?

A CD-R will work just fine.

Do I go through the steps like starting from windows from cd hit r to repair?