[Chankama]

Hey guys.

When you read this, please keep in mind that I am using a SATA Hard drive and that I have loaded them using F6 whenever I had to.

Main problem:
When I do a normal boot in my Windows XP Pro, I get a message saying that "SYSTEM32/CONFIG/SYSTEM" is missing and that I should retart and repair the install using the XP CD..

What I did:
When I hit F8 and attempt to go to [Safe mode] or [restore a previous restore point], it fails on the same message.

When I attempt to repair XP after booting with the XP CD (after hitting F6 and loading up the SATA drivers), it still doesn't work. It gives me the option of selecting the install to boot from and when I press "1" (only option), it hangs (for hours).

Similarly, when I attempt to "reinstall windows", it gets stuck on the "Searching for Previous versions of Microsoft Windows" screen (again for hours).

I do not have the ASR disks as I can't find them. I thought I created them, but can't find them anywhere.

When I load up a Ubuntu CD and try to install, it goes as far as partitioning the drive and successfully recognize the size/type of partitions. I didn't reformat them since I didn't want to lose the data on that drive - yet....

Any ideas guys??.. I need someway to restore to a previously good restore point. Tried the above items. Any other suggetions would be much appreciated.

[Osiris]

If you can get ahold of ERD Commander you can restore to a previous restore point, Ive done this several times before and it worked, at least with my problem it did

[Chankama]

Hey Warez. Will this app be able to handle SATA drives?

Is there any way of getting into Safe Mode with this kind of error message? It's kind of annoying that [Safe Mode] itself is having problems going through with a bad registry. Surely there must be a way to bypass this somehow??... Thx a lot.

[Osiris]

I also have a sata drive on my pc and it does work

you can try this

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545/

[Apokalipse]

boot from the XP disc
press r at the first screen for the recovery console

in the recovery console, do these commands:

DEL C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

COPY C:\WINDOWS\REPAIR\SYSTEM C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

[Chankama]

No can do .. That's why I asked the original question - b/c I couldn't even get into the repair console.

Originally posted by Chankama
When I attempt to repair XP after booting with the XP CD (after hitting F6 and loading up the SATA drivers), it still doesn't work. It gives me the option of selecting the install to boot from and when I press "1" (only option), it hangs (for hours).

Similarly, when I attempt to "reinstall windows", it gets stuck on the "Searching for Previous versions of Microsoft Windows" screen (again for hours).

In anycase, I figured out how to get around the problem without deleting/formatting any of my data. It involved the use of a separate physical hardrive to do a dummy XP install. I'll write about it later. It doesn't involve the use of the recovery console. I should definitely post it since I've seen others that have encountered the same problem. Seemed like they just ended up formatting the drive - which you don't have to do.

Also came across that annoying "Detecting Array" message during bootup.. Managed to get around that too. When I googled for it yesterday, no one seems to have figured it out conclusively. In mycase, it was simply making sure the jumpers on the IDE HDD was of the correct setting - espsecially between Single vs Master (Dual). Should write about that too. Maybe will help the next guy who googles for it..

Thx for the replies guys