Computer Help, this is a hard one.

[SGA]

My G/f's daughter's compaq laptop crashed, it was working fine and poof. running win xp home edition that came on it. She runs antivirus and spyware and keeps it up to date, well, I do.
It says it cannot start because Windows/System32/Config/System file is missing or corrupt .

I have the original disk XP SP1 that came with it and have tried to use the repair console, plus everything else I know and have looked all over the net. chkdsk shows problems, but it will not let me use the chkdsk/p or /r command. It says not a valid command.
Im probably going to get a adapter and hook the hard drive from it to my desktop comp as a secondary to get the data off of it.
Any ideas?

I could do a format and a clean reinstall, but what i really want to do here is get the data (mostly pics and music) off of it with the adapter first and then try to fix it for learning purposes.

[<DRS>GPF]

you could make an XP boot disk and try to repair it that way..
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

run a scandisk and let it repair..

something like that.. its been a while..

[Toadz400]

First thing I would do is get rid of the Home Edition and switch over to Professional.

I think your only solution is to erase the hard drive and start over. We had this problem about a year ago on this computer and there was nothing we could do. Some kind of virus got in and took over.

[<DRS>GPF]

Originally posted by Toadz400
First thing I would do is get rid of the Home Edition and switch over to Professional.

I think your only solution is to erase the hard drive and start over. We had this problem about a year ago on this computer and there was nothing we could do. Some kind of virus got in and took over.


the only advantage to XPpro over XPhome is being able to log onto a domain, otherwise itll do nothing for a home user.. itd be like using an armored car for a mini-van..

the problem sounds more like the boot sector(1st track) going bad.. running a surface scan from DOS will tell..

[ballisticpb]

ok where to start with this one... your best bet is to buy an adaptor to hook it in as a secondary hard drive.. this can be done in the recovery console but a whole lot more difficult... the windows system backs that file up on every completed start... there is a backup of it sitting in windows/system32/backup. just copy and paste it in the Windows/System32/Config. that should allow you into windows...however that file does not normally just get lost most commonly caused by a failing hard drive. could also be a virus that removed that file...

any more questions let me know

[SGA]

Update: I was able to get the important data off of the HD with a 2.5 HD> usb adapter. Then I could do some real checking and changes. Got chkdsk going, it showed all was well, no errors found, but doing a /r it found a bunch of stuff, would start to repair them and at 75% it would stop and say unrecoverable errors.

To be sure and mostly just for learning, put the HD in another laptop, formated HD and reinstalled XP. Didnt take long to start doing weird things, files lost or corrupted, etc.

Went to the seagate HD site, downloaded thier HD tools for free. It ran some very thorough tests, it said physical damage to the disks or read heads and that it could not lock the bad clusters as unreadable.
It did say however the input/output on the MB was ok and the ram was ok too.

Have a new HD on the way from newegg, will be here tommorow.

Back your stuff up! :D