3-7-06 Windows XP Professional

Description of computer crash.

Original problem was computer would freeze on “windows shutting down” screen when computer shut down. Through XP support tools, figured might be caused by one of the “services” running in background. Thru msconfig, I turned off all services on restart to see if computer would then shut down properly, then narrowing the services down to find faulty one to disable. I don’t think my computer ever restarted correctly after that. But main problem now is one that follows:

On boot up, screen would typically say, “invalid boot.ini file, booting from C:\windows”, but would boot up ok, computer would usually run fine...but since above problem, then goes in to screen saying

“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.”

using article 307545, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545/en-us
part one, line 5 has you edit in the recovery console starting with
md tmp,
but I immediately get an “access denied” message.



Other info:
chkdsk command at C: prompt in recovery says “volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems”

At initial bios screen, doesn’t look like my hard drives are detected.

Can not enter an F8 SAFE MODE anytime.

When I type DIR at C:, says “There is no floppy disk or CD in the drive”.
(Usually main hard drive...)

At “welcome to setup” screen, can’t even install again or anything because says no drives available.

Have 2 120 gig hard drives. Builder partitioned second hard drive to contain all Windows info. Don’t even use that drive, but very worried about main hard drive as contains many valuable files.