computer problems (recovery consoles and such)

cooljammer00

Couldn't think of a better thread name, but my situation is this: My dad's laptop seems to be borked. When you start it it says

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt : \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM
You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup.
Select 'r' at the first screen to start repair.

Pressing R just gets me back to the Toshiba start up thing. I've been googling all day, trying to find a fix. I made a Recovery Console bootdisk, ran "chkdsk c: /r" and some other stuff. After running chkdsk twice, I restarted only to be led back to the telltale death screen. There were step by step command lines I found and tried to enter, only for the machine to tell me that the files I was trying to backup and restore could not be found. I assume maybe that I'm looking in the wrong directory? Perhaps it is not C:\Windows that I should be searching in.

Any ideas on what to do? I also read something about just getting the recovery console with a Windows disc, but of course I only have the wonderful razing tool that is a recovery disc. I'd like not to have to slash and burn if I don't have to, and I'd also like to know if this was something we caused or was it just a computer problem. (In case this ever happens again with a computer with more important documents on them.)

eternalbl

Registry repair from recovery console

Hope your dad's getting you a case for this or something.

cooljammer00

That's exactly the kind of stuff I tried to do. I even have it bookmarked incase it decides it wants to work one day. But I couldn't even make it work.

Do you think that guide thing would help? I'd just what, run it concurrently on a different machine (like the one I'm on right now) and have it walk me through it?

eternalbl

Yeah, or print them up or something. I guess there's never any guarantees in life, but I've used those instructions a handful of times for the same thing and it failed to work maybe once.

cooljammer00

Arrgh, can't even use the guided help. This particular computer is running Windows Vista. The one I'm on.

cooljammer00

Ok, I popped in what I thought was the recovery disk that came with the computer (Toshiba) but it just said it's starting Windows 98. I don't want that, do I?

edit: Hmm, just found a Windows XP disk. Yet when I pop it in, I don't get anything. Unless...

JaysonFour

If you don't want to reformat/restore it, stop screwing around with it and take it to someone to get it professionally fixed BEFORE you tinker around with it again. I had a family computer die on me simply because some people think reading something on the internet qualifies you to fix something.

If you don't know how to fix it, stop messing around before you make it a bigger problem or create a new problem you didn't have before.

eternalbl

You said you had a recovery console boot disk you used before. The one to run chkdsk /r? Thats the one to start with.

Jayson's advice isn't bad either. If there's necessary files on the computer take it to a pro. If you can stand losing all the data on the computer, but want to learn then there's no harm in trying to fix it yourself and you'll probably learn something whether you recover it or not.

If it hasn't been said this is not something you caused, it just happens.

cooljammer00

Is there a good reason why? I remember hearing about bit rot all those years ago, being compared to ghosts and gremlins.

I ran chkdsk twice with the bootdisk, and it still didn't work. I got this XP disk to work, so I'm popping it in and running chkdsk again, just to see if maybe it will do better with the actual disk. This really is a learning experience for me, so either way, it's an experience.

urahonky

At this point, cooljammer, the best course of action would be to burning Ubuntu to a disc, booting up to linux... burning all the data you need to a disk, and then wipe/reformat.

Missing the system folder can be a pain in the ass to fix properly (this coming from an IT guy). At least in XP it is. Sometimes you'll "repair" it but it doesn't exactly run correctly.. The registry will be wonky at times.

cooljammer00

Attempting to format and reinstall, but I'm getting a lot of prompts to press Enter to retry to copy a file or ESC to ignore and keep going. They do say that ESCing might cause problems later on. The first time I did this, Windows starts to load, then BSODs.

stuff like wmadmoe.dll. with a name like that, it's gotta be important.

urahonky

Really? Have you checked to see if the disk is clean? That sounds odd that you're getting that many issues trying to format Windows. How old is the DVD/CD-ROM?

cooljammer00

urahonky wrote: »

Really? Have you checked to see if the disk is clean? That sounds odd that you're getting that many issues trying to format Windows. How old is the DVD/CD-ROM?

couple years, I think. One was smudged and dusty, so I tried to wipe it, but it still never really installs those things, and skipping it doesn't work. That 98 thing might be my best shot.