I am in dire need...please, please help! (Naturally, a PC problem)

[slicer15]

Right. Once again my bloody Computer has demonstrated its hatred for me and has decided to tell me that a windows file is "corrupt or missing". the file is \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM. It says run the cd, and press 'r' for repair. I do so, and it asks me which installation to log on to. I selcet the only one there, and it reboots. That's it. No repair. I have the sinking feeling that I will have to format and reinstall the OS again for the fourth time. This time, though, I need some way of rescuing my other files on the Harddrive. Connecting to a different PC would work, right? Just to acces the harddrive? Please, I am not formatting it until I can rescue my other files. Any help really, really, really appreciated!

[andrewas]

You have an NT based windows, probably 2K or XP. Whenever I get that message, I generaly just reformat. It indicates the registry is damaged, and unless you have a backup copy you are basicaly stuffed.

Of course, any competent developer would have included a transaction system (or any other database recovery mechanism, there are lots to choose from and M$ know all about them) to enable the database to be recovered if this ever happened, but you're dealing with M$ products here. &lt/rant&gt

You could have made a recovery disc which would let you fix it, but you have to do that ahead of time. Ive never bothered with it myself, but the option will be somewhere under the control panel.

What you can do is connect the harddrive to another computer. Easiest way is to plug it in place of a CDROM, and make sure you match the jumper settings, running with two masters or two slaves wont work.

Then you can run the BIOS autodetect routine.

And finaly, this machine cant be running an 9x kernel windows or MSDOS - so no win95, 98 or ME. NT, 2K or XP will be fine. Any modern Linux or BSD will be fine.

If you are stuck with a 9x windows, you can get programs to read an NTFS drive, most of which seem to work pretty well. Ill dig one up if you need it.

Of course, you may get lucky and have a FAT32 partition which will read under anything except the first release of win95, but Ive never seen this happen under FAT32.

[ 07-16-2003, 05:35 PM: Message edited by: andrewas ]

[slicer15]

Both PC's in the house are WinXP...so I can recover the data? Phew! I thought all my stuff was gone...thank you so much! I really appreciate this, this has lifted my mood d little! I was so depressed - fourth time its happened. I really need a new PC but I'm skint. Once again, thank you for the help! Oh, any other advice is very welcome, like how to stop this happening again, so this thread ain't finished. I mean, what causes corruptions like that? One minute my PC's working fine, the next minute it rebooted and ruined windows. What gives?

EDIT: Oh, and what would the BIOS autodetect do?
EDIT2: And could this have been a virus?

[ 07-16-2003, 05:42 PM: Message edited by: slicer15 ]

[andrewas]

Your reboot occured while the registry was being written to. Whether the file was damaged or not, NTFS was and the computer isnt even trying to use it. I really do detest M$ at times. Can you tell?

The BIOS autodetect would pick up the details of the new drive so you can access it. Without running it, you would either have to enter the details by hand or not be able to access the hard drive at all.

Some machine automaticaly autodetect on startup though.

Doubt it would be a virus.

AS for preventing it occuring again, most likely the computer threw a stop-code at you, but M$ (I may have mentioned I dont like them very much) decided that BSODs scare users, and the message was never shown to you. In future, control panel -> system -> advanced and uncheck 'automaticaly restart'. With any luck you will get another error soon enough, and hopefuly it wont knock out your computer.

Get that error code and we can try and figure out whats causing it. These things are almost always down to a hardware conflict, although it can be bad drivers.

[slicer15]

The reboot problem I've had since I got the PC, and I have unchecked the automatically restart box. One thing that may help is the it commonly reboots when it shuts down, meaning I have to turn it off at the button. I was too naiive and ignorant to claim on my warranty and now I pay dearly for it. Don't worry, I ain't no Microsoft fan either. Oh, and no error logs appear in the diary log thing in Control Panel.

EDIT: One of my friends said the problem could be overheating. I have tow fans, one on the outside of the box
(as in, on a vent) and one on the motherboard. A third one is on the graphics card. However, one of my friends said that if a PC gives up cos of overheating it won't come back on, where as the other says it will. Any help on that? (Please forgive me for using up your time...I am sorry to ask so many questions...)

[ 07-16-2003, 06:03 PM: Message edited by: slicer15 ]

[andrewas]

It dosent shut down properly? You should have had it looked at under warranty. Thats usualy either a trivial problem or something fairly major.

Does it ever reset and then show the 'do you want to notify M$ dialogue? If so you should be able to get the stop code by going through the technical details.


edit]

I did consider overheating, but that usualy occurs during gaming or other heavy load, and the damaged registry indicates it was during some kind of system maintenance that usualy wont run when the system is under heavy load.

You might want to run monitoring software, goto the motherboard manufacturers site or check the motherboard CD. Most modern motherboards are thermaly monitored. The average temperature should be around 30 and definately less than 50, and during heavy games must not go over 70-80. Most monitors sound an alarm when they go over the limit. Also the voltage from your PSU might be unstable/high/low , the same software can probably tell you that. Depends on your hardware.

[ 07-16-2003, 06:25 PM: Message edited by: andrewas ]

[slicer15]

No, it never says send error report. It just starts up again as though nothing happened. And it does shut down properly sometimes. Unfortunately, I have to say, the unsuccesful shut downs outnumber the succesful ones.

[Animal]

This is a known problem. Run a search on the MS Knowledge Base for missing or corrupt system file, and you'll find a detailed report on how to rebuild your registry.

[Animal]

To heck with it, I'm feeling generous http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;307545

There's no need to reformat your PC. Just get your shut down problem fixed or it WILL happen again.

[slicer15]

THANK YOU!!! The site lists my exact problem!!! Thank you so much!! I really, really appreciate this, I owe you big time, Animal. Really, man, you saved me a whole load of frustration...how can I ever thank you?

Just one more thing...how would I boot to the recovery concole? (Seriously, I don't know.)

EDIT: Spelling errors...
EDIT2:...I am sorry to say...I don't think this works...when I go into the recovery console, it asks me which setup to log onto. When I select the installed windows it reboots. Is there another way to acces the recovery console without using the CD?

[ 07-16-2003, 07:02 PM: Message edited by: slicer15 ]