\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM is missing or corrupt

radroadkill

The title says the problem. I tried to turn on my laptop this morning and that's all I get. It recommends restarting the computer with the original disk which I conveniently put with the rest of my stuff being moved and is already a few thousand miles from where I'm at right now. This laptop is currently the only source of entertainment/information in my home right now so what I'm asking is if there's any way to repair it without the disk. Cheaply would be nice.

Quid

Also I'd like to mention that this is actually my problem and that I neglected to log out of rad's account when using her computer.

devoir

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org/how_do_i_repair_a_missing_or_cor1.htm

I just copy/pasted your thread title into google. Those two links look like they'd cover it, without knowing more details about the situation or having the laptop myself to play with.

Edit: Sorry, I forgot to mention you should be able to do all of this with any Windows XP CD which is actually the key piece of information. Duhhhh. Stop posting after midnight.

Quid

Thanks for the links. And it's Windows XP on a Acer laptop.

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud

Did you try starting in safe mode?

Tofystedeth

As long as you have any Acer Windows XP disc, or a standalone XP disc you should be fine. Unfortunately most of the XP discs that come with prebuilts check to see if the comp in question is one of their own, so you can't even use them for recovery and boot fixing. I hate it.

devoir

Upon further examination (also see my edit in my first reply), check out the steps at the start of the second link. It also contains everything in the first link, but the first link is an official Microsoft one so you can see that it's not just some random guy telling you how to shaft your laptop even more.

Edit: I'd highly recommend not buying another Acer laptop if you ever have the choice. That's just my personal bias, though.

ViolentChemistry

From the first link:

Warning Do not use the procedure that is described in this article if your computer has an OEM-installed operating system. The system hive on OEM installations creates passwords and user accounts that did not exist previously. If you use the procedure that is described in this article, you may not be able to log back into the recovery console to restore the original registry hives.

That means you. There are a lot of things that could be causing this, for example when I had this error message stopping my boot-up it turned out I just hadn't been staying on top of scandisk and defrag, so I stuck it in another computer, booted from the other computer's OS, and then defragged the hard-disk from there, put it back in my computer and it booted fine. But in that instance I knew damned well why shit wasn't working, at that point in time I was doing a lot of downloading and deleting all the time and only kept like 5% of my hard disk space free, and I had already noticed some symptoms of file-system fuckuppery. Files not opening and applications taking several full minutes to load.

Short version: That "last known good configuration" trick is your best bet, but if that doesn't work were you noticing anything particularly odd happening before the thing decided to stop booting?

Quid

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud wrote: »

Did you try starting in safe mode?

Yep, same prompt.

And I have literally zero OS disks for my computer right now because I figured during the couple weeks that it would take me to move the odds of anything happening to it were pretty low. I might get one tomorrow from a friend, but if I use that do I have to worry about all the stuff I have saved on the hard drive?

devoir

Quid wrote: »

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud wrote: »

Did you try starting in safe mode?

Yep, same prompt.

And I have literally zero OS disks for my computer right now because I figured during the couple weeks that it would take me to move the odds of anything happening to it were pretty low. I might get one tomorrow from a friend, but if I use that do I have to worry about all the stuff I have saved on the hard drive?

Yes. Try the initial steps in the second link, report back.

Quid

Last system configuration and safe mode didn't work. The only odd thing that happened was just before I turned it on. It didn't go into hibernate like it normally does but instead the power button was still on when I opened it. There was no activity on the computer when I tried using it so I pushed the power button which made it turn off instantly. I hit it again and got stuck with an error.

Nakatomi2010

Your hard drive is mostly beginning to fail, run a hard drive diagnostic on it before continuing with the repair... This paticluar issue is a common symptom I run into a work when a hard drive is getting ready to die...

enderwiggin13

Nakatomi2010 wrote: »

Your hard drive is mostly beginning to fail, run a hard drive diagnostic on it before continuing with the repair... This paticluar issue is a common symptom I run into a work when a hard drive is getting ready to die...

Seriously? Cause we ran into this error all the time at my office before realizing that it was cause we were forcing reboots off of updates pushed down via SMS. The registry hives weren't closing correctly and were getting corrupted. That's a pretty specific error to be caused by failing hardware.

Quid

I doubt the hard drive's giving out. At least it better not be giving out. It's not even six months old.

Steel Angel

Quid wrote: »

I doubt the hard drive's giving out. At least it better not be giving out. It's not even six months old.

Trust me, it's possible for a drive to start dying early in life. Definitely check it out.

Shade

If your worried about about your HD failing run Drive Fitness Test. Its free and good stuff.