Windows XP giving me hell

I'll do this in seperate points, so its easier to read, I hope.
Below is the first stage of my problem:
-The PC (another PC I have access to) was being used to browse when it suddenly shut down, instantly. It was switched back on, and worked fine for a short while until it suddenly crashed.

-When it was restarted windows refused to load up at all, hanging at the splash screen, even in safe mode it hung at the bit where it lists the files its loading.

-I did a basic repair installation of windows hoping it would allow me in and also maybe fix the problem.
Well it did allow me in but it was very slow and I couldn't use excel or windows installer and so I did another, more comprehensive repair install which made things worse.

-Now it takes ages to load up, and there is no taskbar, the image is scratchy, because the colour is set at 4 bit and resolution is at 800 by 600 and cant be set any higher. Windows can be very slow.

-Also when I try to open excel it says "Cannot use object linking and embedding" and an hour glass appears upon loading any file and it remains frozen like this.

-Internet explorer takes long to load up and sometimes the entire system freezes and unfreezes after some seconds repeatedly for a few minutes. spy sweeper will not work, it froze during the ewido scan and Spybot S&D scan came up with nowt initially.

-trend microscan and bitdefender wont work 'cause they wont load up properly, firefox ask for a disk from the floppy drive for trends scan, and bitdefender wont load cause the link to start the scanner wont work. Internet works fine.

-I did another ewido scan, which came up with tracker cookies, and another spybot scan, some days later (today in fact) which came with more cookies, some winfixer objects, and 3 "windows xp disable..........." registry keys I think.

-Can't copy and paste in browsers, can't delete files.

-windows installer wont work, it claims it "can't be accessed"

Now the second stage (after not having used the pc for a few weeks after the first stage, I tried to fix it again)

I decided to follow the advice of this chap: http://www.digitalwebcast.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=8658

I followed some of the steps in the article:
I installed windows recovery console from a borrowed XP professional installation CD (I have XP home edition, but no proper installation CD), I went into the recovery console and started making the file changes that were stated. all of them seemed to be accepted by the recovery console. except 1:

copy C:\windows\repair\system C:\windows\system32\config\system

oh dear. well I restarted the pc after trying to execute this line a few times. when it did restart it said it couldn't load windows as that file (system) was missing or corrupted. so I did another repair installation, hoping that it would repair this missing file. made things even worse.

now I can't even get into windows, it loaded up saying the installation wasn't complete and needed to gather information about my pc before continuing (and the usb keyboard and mouse wont work) . WT*!?!?! I had just done a repair install of windows, why is it saying this?!

Well um, I did more repair install of windows, basic and complete, which made it even worse. I found I working PS/2 mouse, but now it says windows isn't installed properly, please restart, and it (the motherboard I think) beeps. So now I can't use the PC at is it keeps saying windows isn't installed properly, and restarts when I press ok. I did more repair installs /no avail

Safe mode or Last good known config dont work.

So where do I go from here?
I would like the PC working again without losing my installed programs or at least thousands of music files, documents and pictures. yes I may be able to live with losing installed programs but would rather avoid it.

How do I reinstall the file "system" that I deleted?? would it help?

Can I ascertain for certain if the problem is hardware or software related?

Is it*gulps* time to get a new PC, or some major hardware replacement?

All help on the issue appreciated. Its a fairly big post, thanks for reading.

 

Dude, I'm hoping someone can give you something better than this, but it sounds to me like you're in store for a complete reinstall of Windows. As to what originally caused the problem, it's hard to say. Again, someone may have some idea other than a format and reinstall, but your system is pretty messed up. ;( Hope you can get it sorrted out, and sorry about all your music files. That stinks.
As for hardware, you may want to get a second hard drive so you can back up files to that. I have all my music, pictures, and documents backed up on my second hard drive, as well as backed up on my daughters computer. Basially, I have 3 or 4 copies of everything. A bit overkill, but I'm secure knowing my stuff won't get lost.
Good luck,
Eric

 

You shouldn't have followed that guy's write up. He conveniently left out crucial information that the original MS article states. OEM installations cannot use that article (in the same manner as everyone else).

Not that it matters. Your previous repairs made it useless anyway. The final repair after getting the system file missing error after following the error sealed your fate.

If you need data recovery, MG has you covered.
http://majorgeeks.com/downloads38.html

You are pretty much hosed, however. I don't think there is anything anyone can do for the OS now, except tell you to do a new install. Hope you have your OEM recovery disk(s), because you cannot use your friend's retail copy.

Hate to be a bearer of bad news, but if there was another way, I would tell you. Ask anyone around here, I rarely throw in the towel.

 

If Adrynalyne can't fix it, nobody can.

 

Ah. Thanks for your advice guys.

Are you certain if its a software problem?
How can I be sure a complete reinstall of windows will return things back to normal, and not back to the way they were in Stage 1?

What about getting into the command prompt /dos, using a good system boot floppy, and then trying reinstall the system file from there? bear in mind I did make a system.bak file in following that guys intructions. all I would need to do surely is copy it from the windows/tmp folder to windows and remove the .bak extension surely..........

Even if I can get into the command prompt, what your saying, Adrynalyne, is that there is nothing, no modification, no action that can make this thing better?

Why did my repair installations make things worse?

Any clue as to what caused the original problem....?....the guys over in malware forums say it can't be malware.......then what? Only thing I can think of is hardware, and if it is hardware, doing a full reinstall of windows would surely only get me back to stage one.

I did the repair installs using the OEM recovery disks, so I do still have those............

 

Question 1:
There is no evidence its not a software problem.

Question 2: You can try undoing your last steps, but doing the repair after that may have fundementally altered enough of your system that it won't work.

Question 3: It made things worse by trying to reinstall while missing part of the registry, which can have unpredictable results, and no good can come of it.

A new installation will put new working software on the machine. I see no reason why it won't work. I can tell you why after follwing the article things were bad.

Your registry files were mistmatched vs. the file versions. Drivers were no longer installed, and service pack files and hotfixes were missing. The registry entries were still there.

So, this being hindsight, it could have been possible to resolve your issue by reinstalling all drivers, and OS updates.

 

Pop your HDD into a friend's computer as a slave drive and burn to CD/DVD anything you need to keep (music files, etc). Then pop it back into your computer, format & do a fresh install of Windows. All should then be well.

 

Ok cheers, it should be no problem to back stuff up, I'll do that, but not before giving it one last shot at trying to get into dos and attempting to undo my foolry.

 

what are the options on recovering the registry if you do use OEM windows xp?

 

Yeah I reinstalled windows completely- and reinstalled everything, most things work fine now, cheers.