Broken UPS -> Corrupt boot software

I normally leave my computers (HP Pavilions with XP Home) on all the time with a UPS on them. One of the UPS went south today and started cycling on/off once every second. Before I knew what hit me, I'm left with a black screen and a message indicating the software at

windows/system32/config/system

isn't working. The message suggests doing a repair with my original disk. Uh... HP doesn't give you original disks but they do bug me periodically to run some kind of program to make back up disks. Of course I have not run that program to generate them. Would I have gotten the disk I need if I had run the disk maker? If so, can I make the disks on one Pavilion (different model and hardware) and run it on the corrupted computer?

 

You may be able to fix it with the 2nd process: http://www.pctechbytes.com/hprecovery.htm

 

When I hit the F10 key, the computer changes to a limited DOS mode. It says it is the Windows XP Recovery Module but there is nothing to click on because the mouse doesn't work. I have three choices of directories.
1. D:/i386
2. D:/MiniNT
3. C:/windows

The D:/i386 directory seems to be all the initial system files with the underscore for the last letter - for example system.in_ I did not look in the D:/MiniNT directory. The C:/windows directory seems to be the windows directory on the C drive, as you would expect. I seem to have full DOS navigation but cannot edit anything (probably a real good thing, too). If I knew which file to copy, I could probably copy a file from D:/i386 to C:/windows/system32/config. Renaming seems to be supported in the limited command set available. Do those files get "processed" during a normal installation or are they ready to go with the addition of the suffix letter?

 

This is a registry failure.

The only files you want to be using as a TEMPORARY replacement is located in C:\windows\repair.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q307545&ID=KB;EN-US;Q307545


The difference between OEM and retail is the system file in C:\windows\repair is named system.bak.

 

Thanks for that. I finally have what might appear to be progress. I copied all the files over from the Repair folder to the Config folder and now have Windows running again; however, it's running in VGA mode with none of the startup software running. Furthermore, neither the wireless mouse nor keyboard are working, so once it boots into VGAWindows, I can't do anything to try to help myself.

Just to help diagnose this, I went back into the repair mode and the wireless keyboard works fine. I almost booted into SAFE mode but the mouse and/or keyboard are needed to do that and they didn't work.

Would it help to say the problem machine is a Media Center version of XP? It came with the wireless stuff.

 

Doubt it. Driver/registry mismatch. If you can, use a PS2 or USB keyboard and try to finish that article. Nothing will be quite right until you do.

 

THANKS!
I'm back to using my new computer!!

But wait, there's more. When I boot, I get a Zonealarm message that the Command Line Interface is trying to access the Internet (CLI.EXE). Did I leave something on that should be checked back off?

And if you ever need any help with your jet engines or with organic gardening, I'm your man!

 

Do you have an ATI graphics card?

http://www.auditmypc.com/process/cli.asp