Muffleman Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 And it's serious, the missus can't get on Facebook On bootup it's saying there is a missing system32\file, so I popped in the windows disk and hit 'r' to repair it. Problem is it's saying there aren't any hard drives, and the bios recognises them fine and they are whirring away quite happily. Have I got to reformat the hdd ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scotty71 Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 what Operating system are you using? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 That's a strange one. The computer knows that there are hard disks present and working and that Windows is installed on the bootable partition, otherwise it wouldn't give you a "missing system32\file" message. Could you post up the exact error messages, then we can narrow it down more. If I had to guess at this stage I'd say maybe a corrputed registry (see link) but I might be way off. http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread18179.html# Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caseys Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 Need the exact message matt as Steve said. Could be your partition map is screwed up and it's getting so far then could be failin on the hardware abstraction process which has a number in it to look for a certain partition on various drives. If this gets corrupt you need to boot off cd onto a dos prompt and manually edit if possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muffleman Posted December 17, 2009 Author Share Posted December 17, 2009 Okay will try and get the exact message tonight Bloomin computers, I swear they are all female Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muffleman Posted December 17, 2009 Author Share Posted December 17, 2009 what Operating system are you using? XP Home mate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The-Plethora Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 It may be that the computer has a serial ATA hard drive (SATA) rather than IDE. When you install or re-install it may ask you if you have any drivers you want to load and it may be looking for drivers for the sata / raid controller which the hard disk is connected to, if the drivers for it are not loaded it will not be able to detect the disk and could be why it is showing you that error. Which would fit in with the boot / bios screen showing the disks detected but them not showing up under the install. When XP came out it was around or before the whole SATA disk thing kicked off so not may have the drivers for it. What you 'could' do is get yourself on you favourate illegal torrent site and download an official windows XP service pack 3 CD which someone has put together and use your official CD key when it asks, you will likely find the updated disk has sata drivers. Could be something completely unrelated to that of course but just a hunch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muffleman Posted December 17, 2009 Author Share Posted December 17, 2009 Yeah wondered if it was SATA related but the pc has been running on the SATA disks for years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The-Plethora Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 Was it one you built yourself or one you bought? (dell etc) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 Interesting info about SATA: I wouldn't have thought Winodws would need the SATA drivers if the motherboard's chipset has the drivers built-in (which it will have otherwise it wouldn't be able to look on the hard disk in the first place), but I'm willing to be proven wrong. Every day's a school day, and I've got a lot of learning to do. What you 'could' do is get yourself on you favourate illegal torrent site and download an official windows XP service pack 3 CD which someone has put together and use your official CD key when it asks, you will likely find the updated disk has sata drivers. As an aside, Microsoft make all their OS Service Packs freely downloadable from their own website. No need to go to a torrent for them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caseys Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 I'm putting my money on this : Error Message: Cannot Find \Windows\System32\hal.dll Where normally it's looking for partition 1 or 2 possibly for the file to know what hardware it's running. If it is, see here http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm Can be blatted over when it doesn't need to be when repairing with an XP CD and you have a partitioned HDD or more than one HDD and the XP partition is not on the 1st partion on the 1st drive. If you don't have a partitioned HDD or only have one HDD though Matt just ignore this and give us the full error message. Can't be too much use myself though, haven't used XP at home much for 5+ years now. Buy a Mac, a lot easier to fix and restore Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dude Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 Usually build my own, but bought a Dell for the downstairs office so the missus could use a pc other than mine It's a dimension 9150. No partitions either I'll get the full message and post up. Cheers all AH, I see Dude has left his username logged onto my pc, how can I use this to wind him up Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caseys Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 Usually build my own, but bought a Dell for the downstairs office so the missus could use a pc other than mine It's a dimension 9150. No partitions either dude? You guys share a wife or something??? Or is dude just your name in office hours? I knew you guys were good friends but not that good! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyT Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 AH, I see Dude has left his username logged onto my pc, how can I use this to wind him up I am positive you will think of something Matt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 Originally Posted by The-Plethora What you 'could' do is get yourself on you favourate illegal torrent site and download an official windows XP service pack 3 CD which someone has put together and use your official CD key when it asks, you will likely find the updated disk has sata drivers. As an aside, Microsoft make all their OS Service Packs freely downloadable from their own website. No need to go to a torrent for them. That's not what he meant. He was talking about an XP install disk that has got SP3 slipstreamed into it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muffleman Posted December 21, 2009 Author Share Posted December 21, 2009 Right, the error is : Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM. If I boot in safe mode, it comes up with the above error straight after this file : multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)windows\system32\config\system.log The bios sees both sata drives, but if I try and reinstall windows to either drive, windows says there aren't any drives attached On the upside, the house is much tidier and I've been eating well, I almost don't want to let her have facebook back Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted December 21, 2009 Share Posted December 21, 2009 Your Windows registry is corrupted. Not trivial to recover from, but have a look here for what to do: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesArup Posted December 21, 2009 Share Posted December 21, 2009 Hey Matt, I've had this before on a couple of PC's. This solution HERE has helped me in the past (provided you have a 2nd PC or a Laptop etc handy). Have you tried hitting 'F8' when it's booting to see if the boot menu appears? I think this error would probably be happening before you get to this point, but worth trying just incase. If you can get there, try the 'Load Last Known Good Configuration' option. You could also try running the Check Disc with Recovery option from the Windows CD to see if that does anything. So boot from the Windows CD and press 'R' for recovery. Go to the 'Command Line' mode (I forget exactly what it's called) and type "chkdsk C:/R (assuming that C: is your hard drive with Windows on it). This 'should' run the checkdisc feature with the recovery built in for when/if it finds any issues. Geeks of the world unite! Cheers, J Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muffleman Posted December 21, 2009 Author Share Posted December 21, 2009 Thanks guys, will have a go tonight Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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