Swapping System32 folders

April 5, 2007 8:42 AM

Can I fix a corrupted XP boot by copying the system files over from another installation drive?

I finally got my new PC working this weekend after realizing the XP install problems were a RAM issue- either one of the two sticks or the slot in the MoBo are bad. (And that's another problem I have to work on altogether)

While I've been running smoothly for a few days with only one DIMM in one slot, I tried last night putting the other stick in the other slot to see what would happen (famous last words), and XP not only crashed as soon as it started to load, but then went into the automatic chkdsk on restart... which destroyed the System32 file. I got this problem, mainly because the System32 folder was just wiped. I will admit I wasn't exactly expecting that.

All the standard recovery attempts (including the ones mentioned in that thread) failed- I couldn't repair install or fixboot because it wouldn't even recognize that an installation existed anymore. I tried installing XP on a second partition of the drive (it's a partitioned SATA) but it still gave the missing DLL error and wouldn't continue installation.

So I installed an older IDE hard drive, made it the boot disk, and installed XP on that. With that working, I re-connected the newer SATA drive with the corrupted install and ran chkdsk through XP, which restored the files on the old drive so I could make an extra backup. But looking in explorer, System32 is still completely gone.

I know that XP somehow stores some of this in backup files, so here's my question: Assuming I upgrade the this current drive to SP2 and all the other updates the original installation had, can I just, in XP, drag the System32 folder from the current C: drive and drop it into the old boot drive (currently G:) to make that drive bootable again? Or is there any similar solution that I can do before I format the entire drive and start over?

(And for an encore, just to avoid making this mistake again, is there any chance the original crash problem had to do with dual-channel or BIOS issues with two sticks in place, or should I accept that it's most likely a bad DIMM or bad DIMM slot on the board and I have some annoying RMA issues to deal with in the near future?)

posted by XQUZYPHYR to computers & internet (11 comments total)

You can try copying the files, but it's a bit of a shot in the dark. Imagine if you got slightly differing versions of the DLLs involved, and using the differing versions, caused something at a root level in the OS to be incompatible with something else. Not only could you never track that down, there's no guarantee that any repair options from MS are going to even catch that occurence.

Nuke it from orbit...it's the only way to be sure. Just do a completely new install from the CD. Sure, you'll need to reinstall your applications, but that's a much better situation than having to deal with what may be a crippled install.

As far as how you got to this point in the first place, I've seen Chkdsk pull files and stuff them into its FIX files, but never an entire directory. Do you have a bootable hardware diagnostics CD (or partition) from your hardware vendor to try and see what's up with your DIMMs/Drive?
posted by thanotopsis at 9:05 AM on April 5, 2007

Do you have a bootable hardware diagnostics CD (or partition) from your hardware vendor to try and see what's up with your DIMMs/Drive?

Sadly, no. The board is an Asrock 4CoreDual, which is pretty reliable but one of its cons is lousy BIOS and tool functions. The bootable CD with the board only allows creation of a driver disk if you want to install a RAID, which I don't, and the space issue is irrelevant at this point as I already partitioned the extra post-139MB space on the SATA drive and kinda like it that way.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 9:25 AM on April 5, 2007

This is easily taken care of. Put your hardware back to it's original configuration (especially the memory) and boot off the CD. The installer actually has 2 repair options. The first one is the recovery console, (which has proven useless to me over the years,) and the second one is an automatic re installation that preserves all of you application and user data. When it gives you the first repair option, skip it to continue loading windows. It will then examine your disks and ask you select the partition to install to. If you pick the right one then it should see the previous installation and ask you if you want to repair. This is the automatic reinstall and if all goes well then you shouldn't even have to reload your apps.

One thing that might happen even if you are successful is that your boot.ini file may get filled up with several partitions of XP installs. Once you figure out which one is the correct one you can remove the other entries and decrease the timeout to 0.

Things may not go all that smoothly if you have been swapping disks around and have installed to several times. In that case I would recommend taking everything on the partition that you want the finished install to reside on and putting it in a subfolder named OLD or something like that so when you're finished you have a fresh install without having to delete your data.

At that point you can copy your user application data (%systemDrive%/documents and settings/user/application data and local settings) over to the new user directory, copy your the program files directory back to the root of the drive before reinstalling the programs you want to keep using. I only recommend doing this for applications that you need to preserve settings for like Mozilla or games and such, not your antivirus app or stuff like that.
posted by daHIFI at 10:13 AM on April 5, 2007

This is easily taken care of. Put your hardware back to it's original configuration (especially the memory) and boot off the CD. The installer actually has 2 repair options. The first one is the recovery console, (which has proven useless to me over the years,) and the second one is an automatic re installation that preserves all of you application and user data. When it gives you the first repair option, skip it to continue loading windows. It will then examine your disks and ask you select the partition to install to. If you pick the right one then it should see the previous installation and ask you if you want to repair.

This was one of the recovery attempts I tried that failed as I mentioned in the OP. It doesn't give me the repair option because it doesn't recognize Windows as existing on the system anymore because the folder is gone. When I select the drive, it asks only if I want the full or the quick format.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 10:38 AM on April 5, 2007

If System32 is gone that means a healthy chunk of your registry is gone. Without the registry many things just wont work, including apps if not the entire OS. The windows repair option probably scans for the reg files and if it cant find them it really has nothing to work with. I'm sure there's other junk in system32 thats install specific.

You can try it, but I'd be surprised if this works.
posted by damn dirty ape at 12:06 PM on April 5, 2007

You can still copy the profile from the old machine to a new one and preserve some settings so when you reinstall, say, winamp it will be able to retrieve a lot of your old settings. If these settings are stored in the registry (many apps, including office) then you're out of luck.
posted by damn dirty ape at 12:08 PM on April 5, 2007

I'd strongly recommend running spinrite or a similar disk recovery tool; memory crashes can leave some wacky residue in unexpected places (like file allocation tables). I'd definitely do a spinrite -> format -> clean install if I had the time and the backups...
posted by jenkinsEar at 12:24 PM on April 5, 2007

Try running a spinrite than just install over your xp your file system will remain intact but your programs will have to be cleaned and reinstalled.

As for your ram you may wish to run a Memtest86 to ensure theres nothing wrong with your ram.

Most of the time if you install windows the way I discribed granted the programs you require to keep settings from arent using your old registry for settings. You may just be able to reinstall the same versions over top and settings stored on your hard disk will roll over to your fresh install.
posted by Chamunks at 1:44 PM on April 5, 2007

Forgot to link memtest86
posted by Chamunks at 1:45 PM on April 5, 2007

What is your Dimm setup did you put your chips in slots 1 and 3 In dual channel configuration or in slots 1 and 2 sometimes this can cause strange conflicts with edgy bios's.
posted by Chamunks at 1:49 PM on April 5, 2007

My two cents: don't even try to fix Windows until you're fully confident your RAM is OK.

If it's generic RAM, not name-brand (Corsair, Hynix, Kingston etc) replace it on general principles.

In any case, start by disconnecting all your hard disks, return the RAM to its original troublesome configuration, and make sure Memtest86 can detect a RAM fault. Then work systematically through combinations of RAM cards and sockets until you've positively identified what's bad; then fix it. Don't reconnect your hard disk until you've got all the RAM you want back into your machine and Memtest86 has run error-free overnight.

Assuming it turns out to be bad RAM, and you don't need a different mobo, and assuming the filesystem with the missing system32 doesn't have anything else wrong with it, you could indeed simply copy system32 from another Windows installation made on the same machine (you'd need to use Linux or BartPE or Windows Backup to do this, rather than just drag and drop, because Windows locks some of the files) and it should end up functional. But it won't save you any work, because one of the files inside system32 is config/system, which holds the HKEY_CLASSES and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry hives; and if you replace that with a fresh one, you might as well have done a fresh install.

If you're thinking that you could use System Restore to get you back to where you were once you've made Windows bootable again: don't. It won't work. It will break things in obscure and not-so-obscure ways and make you angry.

Once you've fixed your RAM, your path of least effort is, unfortunately, doing a fresh install - especially since the system has only been running for a few days and hasn't really had much time to build up customizations.
posted by flabdablet at 6:45 AM on April 6, 2007