[JohnnyP]

Can anyone save me the extortionate £1.50 per minute telephone helpline charge from PCservicedesk to attempt to fix my pc?!!!??

I recently had to use my System Restore disk for one reason or another - I attempted to recover using the 'Non-Destructive' method to no avail so I had to use the full restore which deleted all (?) from my hard disk and re-installed all my software from the restore disk. I re-booted the system which was fine until the point where the XP logo and status bar disappear, at this stage the hard drive stops and I am left with a blank black screen.

As far as I can ascertain (from attempting to boot in safe mode etc) the windows system reports that "The restore has not correctly loaded, please retry" so I attempt it again, which I have - several times!! It also reports that the /windows/system32/config/system file is missing or corrupt.

Could it be that maybe I have to download drivers/software for the hard disk as I originally did a destructive restore??

Can anyone suggest what I might do next please???

[Osiris]

what i would do is wipe the partition out using a windows 98 oem bootdisk on a floppy and delete the partition, make a new one, format it then try the restore cd

[JohnnyP]

Thanks Warez, I kinda understand the part to delete with a windows 98 disk but you lost me on how to make a new one and format it!!

Any further help is appreciated.

[Osiris]

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;255867