Help! I can't boot Windows XP and need help with the Recovery Console

September 3, 2006 2:10 PM

Help! I can't boot Windows XP and need help with the Recovery Console

I've been trying to boot my Windows XP laptop and when I do I get the message:

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 using the original Setup CD-ROM. Select r at the first screen to start repair.

So I found my Windows XP disc and started up the recovery console. First off, it doesn't give me the chance to select a Windows installation logon to (i.e., it doesn't prompt me for a password). This negates a lot of the possible fixes I've read about.

I tried running bootcfg /scan and I got the following error:

Failed to sucessfully scan disks for Windows installations. This error may be caused by a corrupt file system, which would prevent Bootcfg from sucessfully scanning. Use chkdsk to detect and disk errors.

Note: This operation must complete succesful in order for the /add or /rebuild commands to be uitlized.

When i use chkdsk i get the message: The volume appears to be in good coniditon and was not checked.

So i use option p to check the volume anyway. And it runs. I try running botocfg again and I get the same error!

Help! I have no clue what's going on. I don't mind writing over my old stuff, but I don't even know how to do that. Any help would be really appreciated.

posted by riz1 to technology (6 comments total)

There's one more repair option left, that doesn't interfere with the rest of the software installed, explained here.
posted by ijsbrand at 2:18 PM on September 3, 2006

Scary Coincidence. I'm currently fighting with this one as well on my wife's machine.

Unfortunately, I can't even get to the recovery console. It bluescreens when it loads windows.

I'm currently building an up to date windows install disc to see if it's a driver mismatch (loading sata/raid drivers off of floppy isn't working).

Once I get into the recovery console I'm planning trying this
posted by Lord_Pall at 2:59 PM on September 3, 2006

Okay so I resolved this, but it's not going to help you.

Turns out there's a bad memory stick (spontaneously bad it looks like). That was causing all manner of bluescreening installs, corrupt registry's and the like.

With the 2 sticks installed, memtest does a thorough freakout. With the 1 bad stick installed it won't post. Works fine with the single good stick.

So my solution is to RMA the ram. Unfortunately that means I can't try out the registry copying solution above. :(
posted by Lord_Pall at 4:08 PM on September 3, 2006

Riz1, if I were you, I would do the following:

0. Try ijsbrand's suggestion.

If that doesn't work:

1. Go and buy an external USB2 hard drive that's at least as capacious as the one in your laptop.

2. Boot up the Trinity Rescue Kit CD on the laptop.

3. Discover the Linux names for the internal and external hard disks using sfdisk --dump. The internal hard disk will have a partition table on it with at least one NTFS (type 07) or FAT32 (type 0C) partition; assuming you haven't ever formatted the external hard disk, it should have no partitions defined.

For example, if you see something like
# partition table of /dev/hda
unit: sectors

/dev/hda1 : start= 63, size=78140097, Id= 7
/dev/hda2 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0
/dev/hda3 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0
/dev/hda4 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0

# partition table of /dev/sda
unit: sectors

/dev/sda1 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0
/dev/sda2 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0
/dev/sda3 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0
/dev/sda4 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0

you'd know that the internal hard disk was /dev/hda and the external hard disk was /dev/sda. I'll assume those values for the next steps.

4. Back up the entire internal hard disk to the external one, using dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/sda bs=1M (this will take a long time to run, during which nothing will appear to be happening).

5. When the backup is finished, unplug the external hard disk, and then do a reformat-and-reinstall of Windows on the laptop.

6. Once Windows is alive again, plug in the external hard disk and recover your files from it.
posted by flabdablet at 5:36 PM on September 3, 2006

As for what's going on: the file that Windows is reporting as corrupt (\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM) is the file that holds the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM registry hive. Lots and lots of system-specific info is in there. Without it, Windows is pretty much kaput.

There is a pretty good chance that the repair-installation procedure that ijsbrand linked to will fix it, unless you too are suffering from the bad RAM issue that brought Lord_Pall's wife's machine undone. Unless you have some clue what killed your Windows, it's probably worth your while making up a Memtest86+ boot disk and checking for that before going any further.
posted by flabdablet at 5:42 PM on September 3, 2006

That page I linked to has a sugestion that seems to be a manual copy of a registry backup from the repair console.

Hard Way
Boot your system with the Windows XP Install CD, let the system boot into the Setup. Once in the Setup, choose to run the Recovery Console.

You will now be presented with a screen similar to good old DOS.

First, we will recover the System Hive.

Now, type in the following commands with pressing Enter after each line.

md tmp
copy C:\windows\system32\config\system C:\windows\tmp\system.bak
delete C:\windows\system32\config\system
copy C:\windows\repair\system C:\windows\system32\config\system

Be very careful when you are typing in these commands, one wrong move, and you know, broken Windows XP.

Also, change the C in the commands to whatever your Windows XP drive letter is.

Attempt to boot the system, if it doesn't boot, get back into the Recovery Console and do the following commands.

md tmp
copy C:\windows\system32\config\software C:\windows\tmp\software.bak
delete C:\windows\system32\config\software
copy C:\windows\repair\software C:\windows\system32\config\software

Note
The full Microsoft Support Knowledge Base Article that I based this FAQ entry on can be found here (Q307545).
posted by Lord_Pall at 8:08 PM on September 3, 2006