Win XP FUBARed?

[Glaive]

Ok, so a friend from work was having some computer problems, and I agreed to take a look at her PC.

She was having issues with general slowness, as well as getting her modem to work.

She's running XP Pro on an Athlon XP 1800 with 128MB of PC133 RAM on an ECS mobo with an SiS chipset and integrated video. HD is a 40GB Western Digital.

I got her comp home, hooked it up to my DSL, and proceeded to download the bazillion Windows updates that she had never done, including Service Pack 1. I restarted the computer. Then I installed AIDA32, Spybot, and Ad-Aware to help clean things up, and restarted again.

This is when things messed up.

I got stuck at a screen that said that "\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM" was missing or corrupted, and that I needed to do a repair install of windows.

I tried rebooting again just to make sure it wasn't a glitch, then I popped in the old XP Pro disc I had lying around, and selected "Repair Installation."

I've never done a repair install before. I thought it would be pretty straightforward, like doing a clean install of Windows is. I got sent to a "C:\WINDOWS" command prompt, and told to hit "help" for a list of commands.

I did not at this time know how to figure out what these did.

I tried the various commands that seemed related to booting. Somehow I managed to add an additional installation of Windows to the boot list, so that even though there's only one install on the single hard drive, now when you try and boot up the computer, you get to a screen that asks you to select which OS to boot with.

I have no idea how to get rid of this. I noticed that there is a "bootcfg /add" command, but there is no "/remove" command listed.

Secondly, I still can't get the computer to boot. I tried using the "copy" command to get the file off the CD and into the hard drive, and it says "file copied" but it doesn't do anything.

Could someone walk me through (very simply) how to:

1)remove that extra entry from the boot list, so you don't have to pick an OS each time you restart as if you were dual-booting

2)fix the missing file problem so that this thing will work

Is this problem potentially something I caused? I didn't do anything crazy with windows, and certainly didn't delete any files. She only gave this to me to fix a modem problem, so I'd hate to tell her I had to do a total new Windows install and that all her data is gone.

Please help me fix this. I will be eternally grateful.

[Panama Red]

If it was me, I'd remove her hard drive, put it in my machine and save all her data files to a folder on my hard drive. Then, to borrow a phrase from glc, nuke and pave! (reformat and reinstall) After all the updates are done and everything is back to proper running, transfer her files back. This will probably be your last resort so just hope somebody comes up with a better idea. Good luck.

[andyms18a]

hi glaive
when you boot from the xp cd chose the option to instal on the first screan then on the next menue chose the repair option when windows finishes loading open control panal select clasic view and then chose the system icon on the new window select advanced then startup and recovery and then edit remove one line of the windows operating systems to load hit apply and then ok
allso with 128 mb of ram and shaired video her system will be very slow try and get her to get another 256mb or even better 512mb and instal it the efects on speed will be fantastic and she will think your a hero

[Glaive]

Does it matter when this Windows CD is from?

The only mention of repair install on this CD is on that first screen, and it takes me directly to a command prompt. Hitting the other option just goes through the normal process for doing a clean install, no mention of a "repair installation."

[Glaive]

Is this other repair option you're referring to after the "select partition" screen? I was afraid to go past that one because I didn't want to accidentally format and erase everything.

[oddjob]

Originally posted by Glaive Is this other repair option you're referring to after the "select partition" screen? I was afraid to go past that one because I didn't want to accidentally format and erase everything.

Yes, that's where it should be. Don't worry about deleting stuff, it will ask you to confirm deletion and/or format before it does so. It can't be done unless you give it the OK first.

[glc]

You will need to get her XP CD, don't try to do this with yours.