will not start

I have an ancient system. Dell. XP. Wife and kid shut it off from the circuit breaker this week cuz they had no internet on their laptops. I restart it today and get the following: following file is missing or corrupt: Windows\System32\Config\system. I have disc from Dell that reads Reinstallation CD MS Windows Home Edition. When it put it the approriate slot it does not work, (nothing happens). Restart with recovry console (which is installed) fails to do anything.So........what do I do?

 

Try starting with the Dell disc in the slot but hit F12 during the Dell screen and see if you can choose CD/DVD as the boot device.

If it boots to the installation disc then try "R" for repair to get to the Recovery Console and try the chkdsk c: /r command to attempt to fix the corruption.