system32\config\system corrupt or missing

Jun 26, 2009
1,970
41
48
New Jersey
:confused:

I hate XP, i need to just switch over to 7 or dare i say.... a mac.

I was working a mix the other night, turned my comp off and came back the next day, and all of a sudden system32 is missing. I booted a disc with recovery console mounted on it, and when i press R to get in, it doesnt ask me for a password or anything, just brings me to a prompt with

C:\

When i try to repair the files like any website tells me, it says there is not a disc in the tray. I have my boot order set up like this

CD drive
floppy
HD

so there should be a reason why it cant find a disk. My XP disc is long lost so there is no way of getting that back. Even when i try to install windows it tells me it cant find the EULA.





I hate technology :mad:
 
I booted a disc with recovery console mounted on it, and when i press R to get in, it doesnt ask me for a password or anything, just brings me to a prompt with

C:


so there should be a reason why it cant find a disk. My XP disc is long lost so there is no way of getting that back. Even when i try to install windows it tells me it cant find the EULA.



I hate technology :mad:
-That's supposed to happen...

-You don't need THE exact XP disc it came with for installing XP... ahem cough cough... All you need is a disc with xp and the license which should be on a sticker on your computer. (and drivers of course, but those can be found online if you dont have a driver disc)

-Don't be so whiny. It's not XP's fault your computer is having trouble; things just happen sometimes. Take it to a professional if you can't figure out how to run through recovery mode.
 
-That's supposed to happen...

-You don't need THE exact XP disc it came with for installing XP... ahem cough cough... All you need is a disc with xp and the license which should be on a sticker on your computer. (and drivers of course, but those can be found online if you dont have a driver disc)

-Don't be so whiny. It's not XP's fault your computer is having trouble; things just happen sometimes. Take it to a professional if you can't figure out how to run through recovery mode.

im whiny because i hate losing all my project files. I know they should be backed up and most of them are, but its the principle of the matter. I just wish i didnt have to re format XP every year. and what is suppose to happen? C:\ on the prompt? I have read just about everywhere that it should ask you for your password and what drive you are trying to boot from. Also that it should be C:\WINDOWS but im not 100% sure thats just what i read. Any suggestions ihate? Sorry to come off like a bitch, i just hate computers lol
 
You can do that or get a recovery USB drive or CD and an external hard drive, start up the recovery drivemount the drive that won't boot (how kinky that sounds...), move the project files and such over to the external drive, and hopefully learn a lesson about keeping too many important things on your OS partition/drive. (Do a disk integrity check before reinstalling, though... and don't forget that OS X, or any other OS, is dead if a screwed hard drive comes into the picture.)

Jeff
 
Ok so I found an old hard drive I'm trying to reformat so I can slave my other one to get everything off it. Only prob Is when trying to install xp, I get an blue
screen

008e
systemdd.sys

I have read it's because of badram, but I tried 4 different sticks and no luck. I read I should try to disable cache and shadowing, but I can't figure it out for the life of me
 
Ok, here is the deal dude ......

You need a few things to fix this:
1. Windows Xp CD, while I dont condone stealing, you already have a legit license so go download an ISO from somewhere and have a friend burn it to CD.
2. Bootable Linux CD - DSL, Ubuntu, Debian Lite
3. USB Stick or External hard drive with enough storage to save your files.

Steps:
1. Put your PC back together the way it was
2. Boot to the Linux CD
3. Plug in USB Stick or External Hard Drive
4. Navigate to your internal drive and copy the files to the external
5. Reboot Machine with XP CD in the tray and re-install or repair windows

Done!

From now on back up your shit EVERY DAY! As soon as you are done working on a project GET IT ON AN EXTERNAL DRIVE or A DVD!
 
0x8e stop error is most likely an access violation by a poorly written driver. Have you been able to get into safe-mode?

Cant get into safe mode. I have an old hard drive i cleared out. When i try installing XP i get a blue screen about systemdd.sys Microsoft says it is most likely bad ram, but i just switched in and out between 4 sticks of RAM and i still get the same message so its obviously not RAM or hard drive related since i switched them out and still got the error. I cant do the F6 option of installing the SATA drives because i dont have a floppy drive. Next thing when i get home im gonna try is swapping out my graphics cards (i now have a NVIDIA 9800gt (i think thats what its called, not sure since its off the top of my head) but i had the stock one in until a few months ago) and see if that makes a difference. I cant even boot XP and i have tried 2 different disks, 2 different hard drives and 4 different RAM sticks.

:loco:
 
Ok, here is the deal dude ......

You need a few things to fix this:
1. Windows Xp CD, while I dont condone stealing, you already have a legit license so go download an ISO from somewhere and have a friend burn it to CD.
2. Bootable Linux CD - DSL, Ubuntu, Debian Lite
3. USB Stick or External hard drive with enough storage to save your files.

Steps:
1. Put your PC back together the way it was
2. Boot to the Linux CD
3. Plug in USB Stick or External Hard Drive
4. Navigate to your internal drive and copy the files to the external
5. Reboot Machine with XP CD in the tray and re-install or repair windows

Done!

From now on back up your shit EVERY DAY! As soon as you are done working on a project GET IT ON AN EXTERNAL DRIVE or A DVD!

this is a great idea, the only prob is i cant manage to reboot either hard drive.
 
XP doesn't load gfx drivers during the install, even slipstreamed drivers don't load till the first boot after all 3 install phases. Still its worth pulling all extraneous hardware. Is it an XPSP3 install disk? Are you overclocking?
 
kaspersky do a recovery disk based on the BARTpe environment.
great for this kinda thing.
 
OK i just tried formatting my other hard drive in an old dell computer and it worked! So there is obviously a problem with a piece of hardware on my current setup thats causing that blue screen error. I will have to look more into it but the good thing is i am gonna try to run my hard drive (the broken one) as a slave and get the info off of it. Thanks again to everyone who helped out in my time of need <3
 
At least you haven't lost data - and PCs can be replaced. important thing is ur stuff :)

On a slight tangent, anyone here a fan of Windows Home Server for backups/media streaming? That is one cool bit of kit that can image backup up to 10 machines, supports disk mirroring (folder duplication) and shared network folders. Runs on just about any PC, is based on Windows server 2008, and is very cool. Costs about 75GBP for a licence. I don't work for MS, but I must admit it's a good bit of kit.