WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM corrupt,

Igot this message on my Dell D610 running xp pro SP3. I followed all the instructions on the microsoft website to the letter. I had various errors along the way such as access denied, and cannot find file etc etc. I eventually got through it all and rebooted my laptop, only to get the basic xp desktop screen with all my shortcuts and programs missing. I can see all the programs in c:\program files and in documents and settings but office will not run nor will outlook. Also I noticed in 'my computer' that only sp2 was installed. I attempted to do a system restore but there were no restore points!
Any ideas are very welcome, thank you

 

Hi my friend , welcome to MG's :major , read this article !! :wave

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

 

The reason this happened was because the repair subfolder has the registry hives that were saved during the XP install and are very old. The only other option is to hope you still have some kind of restore points in your System Restore Folder.

Follow steps 3b and 3c here. If you do not have any files in the RP subfolders, than this will not work and you will have to reinstall your programs.

http://forums.pcper.com/showpost.php?p=3421106&postcount=5

 

Are you trying Last Known Configuration ? :wave

 

Absolutely perfect, thank you very much. Its back to a sate of normality now.
Any idea what would have caused that, so I could prevent it from re-occurring,cheers again.:-D

 

I'm happy to see someone actually get through all those steps and have it work. I've been reading those instructions for years and they make my head spin. Good work!

I don't know for sure the cause of the problem but my guess is just random corruption of the file system causes the SYSTEM registry hive to be unreadable. It just happens to be such a critical file that it causes a huge problem. I'm impressed you have fixed it.

 

Nice Job! Glad you got it fixed. Sometimes using last known configuration works as falconattack posted.

It will not prevent the situation from reoccurring but you might want to look at installing a system imaging program. Backup your system to an image on an external drive and if the drive becomes corrupt, boot the rescue CD the program created and recover the image. Saves a lot of pain.

There is Todo Backup and Macrium. Both have free versions. Just make sure that the rescue CD that is creates sees all of your drives after it boots or the program is useless.

There are open source Live CD's that will do the same thing. These create a system backup outside of windows. Clonezilla and Redo backup are two

clonezilla tutorial

Redo backup tutorial