Boot Trouble...

[stryphe]

Hello all.

I recently came down with a common boot problem... Every time I try to turn my computer on it says WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM is corrupt or missing and how I can attempt to fix the problem. I have a Windows XP disk, it's an upgrade disk with SP2 on it. The Windows that my computer currently has is one from 4 to 5 years ago and doesn't have SP2. So I put in my disk, and I try to boot the Recovery Console, everything's going according to planned, and then it asks me which Windows system I would like to log onto for the Recovery Console. I choose the only available option, 1, and it just freezes after that.. It won't do anything. After this, I tried just doing a clean installation. After I press F8 to show that I agree with everything, it goes to "Searching for previous versions of Microsoft Windows" and just sits there. I have no idea what to do at this point, so if anyone could help me out, I would greatly appreciate it.

-Anthony

[The Wizard]

Try booting with your XP CD and doing a repair, not a recovery.

Boot from your Windows CD, when it gets to the screen that says 'To install Windows press Enter'.
Go past the licence agreement and you should get to a screen saying 'To repair the selected Windows XP installation press R'
This will repair and recopy any missing files

Dont press R at the first screen though, thats the recovery console, not what you want.

If this works ok, you will have to reinstall SP2 and subsequent updates again.