JohnK Posted July 25, 2005 Share Posted July 25, 2005 Well actually im running 3 OS's or trying too. All on my laptop, all on different partions. Originally I was dual booting ME and XP, all worked fine. I then had need for 2K so I borke out partition magic and made a new partition. I installed 2K on this which works fine, as does ME. However XP has stopped working, it stops while booting with the white bar at the bottom on screen and gives the error "windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEMd startup options for windows 2000, press f8" It then says about attempting repair using the recovery console. I thought about copying the file from 2K to XP but cannot find "SYSTEMd" anywhere on any partition. I have also tried FIXMBR and FIXBOOT? I've had a google and found a few things on it some easy that dont work and some hellishly complex that I dont really want to get involved in (burning cds ect.) Anyone have any ideas please? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl0s Posted July 25, 2005 Share Posted July 25, 2005 the message should actually read "windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM" the other part should say: For advance"d startup options for windows 2000, press f8" the two lines of text become overlayed. it's wierd, but that's how it is. I guess the screen isn't cleared before the "windows could not start" message is dumped on the screen. \windows\system32\config\system is the system hive of the registry. boot into your 2K system, open regedt32 (regedit doesn't have the same functionality in 2K.. in XP they merged the advanced functionality like Security and hive loading into regedit), go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE hive/window, then go to file -> load hive, and browse for the above file on your XP partition. When asked what name to put it under, call it "XP". regedt32 should try to load your XP registry hive so you can look through it. This is useful because if possible, regedt32 will repair the file with the use of logfiles, and will tell you that it has recovered it. You then need to highlight the newly loaded "XP" hive, and go to File -> Unload Hive... it's important that you unload the hive after finishing. So all you have done, is open up the SYSTEM part (hive) of your XP system, and then close it again. Hopefully in doing so it has been recovered from corruption. If regedt32 is unable to recover it (you will be told that it's unreadable or somesuch), then you'll have to go find a backup of the SYSTEM file on the XP partition, and copy it over to where the live one is. Don't delete the live one (\windows\system32\config\system), just rename it to SYSTEM.BAD or something. Backup copies can be found in \windows\repair, but check the date on them! they could be very old and will most likely be the initial-setup versions from when you installed Windows! Good luck. backup copies can be found in \windows\repair. you might want to just do a repair install of windows after booting from the CD, but the first option above is definately worth a shot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnK Posted July 25, 2005 Author Share Posted July 25, 2005 Carlos Thanks very much for that, the regedt32 option didnt work, so I copied over the backup, they date on it was over 2 years old but the xp install is only a few months old??? Anyways, XP now gets to the end of the white bar while booting then blue screens and resets. It does this so fast I cant see what it says. Any more ideas? I did load the backup into regedt32 but it gave no errors ect. Thanks in advance Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl0s Posted July 25, 2005 Share Posted July 25, 2005 sounds like that backup you copied over was no good, somehow from a different hardware profile or motherboard? what happened when you tried to load the original SYSTEM file into regedt32? did it say it was corrupt, or did it load it happily? you should run chkdsk on the drive too.. I don't know why I didn't say that before.. just use the Disk Check tool in My Computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnK Posted July 25, 2005 Author Share Posted July 25, 2005 Its a Laptop so all components have always been the same. Regedt32 gave an error, regedit could not accomplish the requested operation. Running chkdsk now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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