HELP! Corrupted System file

Larry Scutta · Mon 31 May, 2004 19.31

This is on behalf of a friend of mine.

He installed an application today and when the PC (windows XP) restarted it gave the error message: 'Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM'

I looked up this on Google and found several identical solutions, the one we followed was the one at the bottom of here:
http://forums.driverguide.com/showthread.php?t=2004.

Using the Windows recovery console (with me giving instructions over the phone!), we backed up the system file, deleted the original and tried copying the one from the repair folder into it Unfortunately the system file in windows/repair didn't exsist but there was one called system.bak , comparing this with the same folder on my XP machine i saw that I had the file and it was about 1Mb and created on the day of purchase, my friends on the other hand was created in September 2003 (3 months before he bought it) and was 2Mb (the original, corrupted version was 3MB).

So we decided to copy this system file into the main system directory, the thinking being that if it didn't work we could just delete it and copy the original file back in again so that everything was as it was originally.

Still with me?

Rebooted the computer and it didn't work, it was struggling to boot and kept sending the monitor into standby mode. So we restarted and went back into the recovery console to put the original system file back..... but it asked for our administration password. First time round we just pressed return and it let us in..... this time it rejected it and we can't back into DOS to undo our changes.

So:
Am I right in thinking that the system file holds system passwords and we've accidently ressurected one of these?

Is there any way that we can get into DOS? (we've tried safe mode)

Will any of the following work:
Plug the hard drive into another machine and put the files back that way.
Copy a system file from another computer (such as mine which was bought on the same day as my friends)

Or will we just have to re-install XP using the recovery disc?

Cheese Head · Tue 01 Jun, 2004 09.57

Is it possible to use the Repair function on the CD ?

Larry Scutta · Tue 01 Jun, 2004 11.05

It was that we used in the first place and we can't use it now because it requires a password..... which we don't know

As a follow on, I have made an MSDOS recovery disc on my Win XP machine. Am I right in thinking that if I boot from that it will lt me straight into MS DOS?

Cheese Head · Tue 01 Jun, 2004 16.35

I made on to try and install W3.11 on, but I couldn't access my hard drives to install from, so I can only install it from floppy.

I do think this is DOS, but you can only access anything from Floppy...