Need huge help with reinstalling XP...

[kurtoski06]

What has happened is one day I was in a hurry so I just switched my computer off at the mains. Anyway when I came to turn my PC back on, It loaded up like usual to the point where XP would usually start to load, but only this time it comes up saying...

...

Windows could not stat becuase 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 becuase I no longer have the orginal setup CD, I got lent off one of my freinds an Original Windows XP Home Edition CD. I know this CD works fine becuase I just recently reinstalled Xp succefully on to my Dads notebook.
I changed it so that it would boot form the CD-Drive instead of the harddrive and I to boot the XP disk CD from my CD drive, it says the usual "Booting form CD1. Press any button to continue" like expected or something along those lines but when I do press a button, it just goes on the same screen as mentioned above, but you can hear the disk start up like it should do but no Windows instalation screen.

So if somebody could help I would be very thankful or if they can atlest tell me that my PC is a write-off.

Cheers guys and gals..

 

[Adam18290]

What type of keyboard do you have plugged in, if its usb then it may not be picking up straight away even though you may still be able to enter bios using delete try using a Plug and play keyboard, should have a purple round ending. Let us know how it goes...

 

[Dano]

What type of keyboard do you have plugged in, if its usb then it may not be picking up straight away even though you may still be able to enter bios using delete

And then check to see that USB support is set to BIOS.

try using a Plug and play keyboard, should have a purple round ending.

PS/2 is the term you're looking for.

Let us know how it goes...

Indeed

 

[Diggsy]

As above, make sure the keyboard is working.

Also I had this very problem on Friday with a friends system. You can fix it. It's a little bit long winded, but it can definately be sorted.

First off, go into the bios and ONLY enable the CD/DVD rom as a boot device. I have found on some configurations, that it tries to boot from the HDD no matter what the order is, and the only way to force it to CD was to disable all the others (make them all CD if need be, and disable boot other devices) just until you get sorted.

Now the next thing I would suggest is to boot to the Recovery Console off the XP CD. See here for instructions...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654

And the first thing I would try is to run a disk check. Type chkdsk /f at the command prompt. With any luck that will fix the errors for you, if not it's onto the next step below...

I had to follow the instructions here as the disk check didn't work for me (this is the long winded bit)...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

 

[Adam18290]

PS/2 is the term you're looking for.

Thats the one, was unsure at the time when i wrote it but just couldnt think