XP not booting, windows/system32/config/system missing or corrupt

[hellokitty[hk]]

Hi my computer was working fine last night, but then when I tried to boot it this morning I got:
Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt windows system32 config system.
Safe mode doesn't work, last known good configuration doesn't work, and I tried to do a repair install but it didn't seem to see my previous installation of windows.
I haven't made any changes to anything AFAIK.

I read this but it seems that you need to use safe mode.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545
Thanks for your help.

 

[Tmagic650]

Hard drive failure?

 

[DelJo63]

Ouch - - sounds like HD failure to me too

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

If I hadn't just reformatted a few months ago I'd be happy to replace it with an SSD
Is there anything I can do to confirm? Should I try to reinstall windows?

 

[DelJo63]

Hmm; You need to boot something that will allow you to inspect the condition of the Partition.
My Win/7 Disk Management (via the CP->Admin Tools->Computer Management) reports
the boot partition as

• Health
• boot
• page file
• Primary Partition

the Recovery partition as

• Healthy
• System
• Active
• Primary

Crashed partitions show up as Unknown, RAW, or nothing at all. In this case, you could perform a Clean Install
which should prompt to format the device. If you can get a tool for formatting BEFORE you start the install,
perform a low-level format (ie not the Quick Format) - - you want every block on the HD to be rewritten.

Once you take this path, ASAP, get a cmd prompt and enter CHKDSK c: /F /R which will verify every file

 

[Tmagic650]

Yes you can try a re-install. This should confirm that the hard drive is bad. What is the hard drive's make and model?

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

Hmm; You need to boot something that will allow you to inspect the condition of the Partition.
My Win/7 Disk Management (via the CP->Admin Tools->Computer Management) reports

Hmm, what's the easiest way of doing this? When I booted into the windows installer it showed the partitioning exactly as it should be, a primary partition and some unallocated space that I was planning to install linux on.

I think I lost my flash drive though and I have a bootable windows XP on that probably would work.

 

[Tmagic650]

Yes you can try a re-install. This should confirm that the hard drive is bad. What is the hard drive's make and model?

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

It's a WD Caviar 500GB, can't remember what color. It's been around four or five years of pretty light use.
In case it wasn't clear before, the WD hdd is partitioned into a 400GB NTFS partition and ~80GB of unpartitioned space.

Sorry I've been a little busy, I did try installing windows and using the unpartitioned space as a new partition but it said that that partition wasn't suitable for a windows (xp) install.
AFAIK XP should be able to create a new NTFS partition using the unpartitioned space and install on it so this is bad.

I would like to try and access the HDD first and get some files off before reformatting and trying another install, so I will move some files around on another working PATA hdd I have and try to install windows there. For some reason my linux disks did not work.

Thanks for the help.