Serious Help With Xp !!!

[carlmccut]

Let me give a little back ground on this. I built a new rig for my brother and it has run great for several weeks now. He has called me recently saying that he is getting the following message:

Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

I have tried to walk him theough a repair, reinstall and tried to get the restore console to no avail. The only message he gets is hard drive can not be found!!! The issue here is that he is in MI and I am in VA.

I am wondering would it be easier to delete the RAID 0 array and rebuild it then reinstall XP or is there an easier fix. I have gone to the MSoft site and their suggestion was to have my brother take the rig to a computer shop. Right now there is not much to be lost except for programs that can be reloades on to the computer.

Any suggestions?????

[rjfvillarosa]

Umm...........Well thats as clear as mud.

[Force Flow]

I have tried to walk him theough a repair, reinstall and tried to get the restore console to no avail.

No avail as in he tried it and it didn't work, or no avail as in he couldn't get the repair started?

[carlmccut]

He could not get repair, restore or reinstall to work at all. He gets the message hard drive not found.

[MulderMan]

if he is booting up with the CD correctly then he should have no problem with the repair.

[carlmccut]

I have gotten him to boot from the Cd but he is getting the same message Hard drive not found.

[rjfvillarosa]

Originally Posted by rjfvillarosa Umm...........Well thats as clear as mud.

Please ignore this post it was made when the original post had no information in it at all.

[rjfvillarosa]

Carl. What hard drive is it and have you considered hard drive diagnostics, maybe its an MBR fault and you are not getting as far as the hard drive test in BIOS. If the hard drive is not displaying itself correctly then maybe it can't be found by the rest of the system.

[carlmccut]

He has two segate Barraccuda 80gb hard drives. I am waiting for my brother to call me and I am going to have him try to boot form the Xp CD again and read mee all of the messages he has. Iam also going to walk through the bios set up to ensure that everything is ok there. The frustrating part is ithat I can not see his computer and am working over the phone.

[rjfvillarosa]

I understand your phone frustration, I have a similar situation with my son he lives in the UK and I live in Puerto Rico (5 hour time difference as well)
Seagate do an excellent hard drive diagnostic tool that fits on two floppy's, just download it from the seagate site and run the application, it will create two floppy's for you, just boot the machine with the first floppy into DOS and do the test there. Obviously he will need internet access to download the file and a hopefully the same machine to run the application on. I hope he has a sympathetic friend or neighbour who can help.
Best of luck.

http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/

[carlmccut]

Well I wakled my brother through the bios and everything is ok. I also checked the RAID Array and it is functional. My next item is to have him reload the drivers. It seems that while going through the XP setup the soft ware is not seeing the hard drives. There is noone locally that has a computer so he has go to his office to copy the 3rd party drivers to a floppy. Once he does that and we re try the set up I will post my results.


Thanks rjf' for the suggestion. The hard drives are ok using the utility from seagate!!!! So I think now we need to get the drivers reinstalled.

[rjfvillarosa]

Glad to hear the HD's are ok.
let me know how the rest goes.

[glc]

With a raid array, you have to do the F6 thing and load the raid drivers from a floppy to get into the console after booting with the CD.

[carlmccut]

GLC Yeah I know. I have finally gotten him to copy the drivers to a floppy. His neighbor was away and he did not want to go to the office. Well we have the drivers now let's see what happens!!!

[carlmccut]

Hey all,

I have gotten to the Recovery Console and rebuilt my brothers regristry. We are now tieing up a few loose ends. Thanks for your suggestions. It just took awhile doing things over the phone. Just a note for others that may encounter corrupt regristry problems for windows there is an article ID 307545 At the M$oft support web site. Plus all of the help from PCMECH members!!! Thanks again!!!!!!!!