wife deleted some apparently important files.

[foolio]

My everloving wife was trying to get her scrapbook making program reinstalled and was maddly deleting files in an effort to get windows to recognize that the program was not available. Somehow she deleted some system32 file or something of that sort. Apparently it is a somewhat important file which WindowsXP cannot start without. The only suggestion that comes up on the screen when windows will not start is that we go to some start up screen and type the letter "r" while the WinXP disc is in the disc drive. I've tried pressing "r" at the post screen, and at the screen where the different PCI devices are recognized. I've tried starting in safe mode. Pushing "r" at any of these points does not produce any effect at all. Anybody familiar with this problem or have any idea what start up screen I should be getting to. Thanks.

[HAL9000]

Boot from your XP CD and choose a repair installation.

[foolio]

I truly am a fool. You'll have to explain how to boot from my XP CD. Thanks

[Lance1]

Put the XP CD in the CD/ROM and restart the computer. If your CD/ROM is set in the BIOS to boot after the hard drive it will not boot from the CD/ROM but just the hard drive. So upon restart, go into the BIOS and set the CD/ROM to boot first. Save the settings in the BIOS and then reboot. You’ll then be able to boot to the CD/ROM and use the repair installation feature.

Lance.

[foolio]

Thanks for your help.