Windows won't boot, possible to reinstall without wiping drive?

homegrown · 09-28-2008, 05:02 AM

Hi all.

I have a SATA that I was running my Win. XP Pro on.

One day suddenly the drive wouldn't boot Windows up, giving me the black screen reading "\windows\system32\config\system is damaged or corrupted etc."

Normally I would've just booted from CD XP install disc, reformatted the drive clean and reinstalled Windows. But I have many important files on the drive that I CAN'T lose.

Luckily, I have another drive that I've installed Windows on and am running on that. I've gone over the files inside the other drive, and the files that I need are still there working fine and don't seem damaged or corrupted at all.

My question is, is there any way I can reinstall JUST Windows on the drive? I think I've done this before I just can't remember how. I don't want to reformat the drive clean, I just want to reinstall the operating system components so the drive will boot again.

My problem is I can't actually boot from the drive currently at all...

Is there any way to do this?

Thank you for any help.

Mak213 · 09-28-2008, 06:19 AM

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install

Do that. This is a inplace upgrade also known as a repair install of XP. IT just replaces teh Windows files.

EricB · 09-28-2008, 04:05 PM

use a bart pe or win pe drive to get your files

carnageX · 09-28-2008, 08:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EricB

use a bart pe or win pe drive to get your files

He's able to view the files already because he said he slaved the drive (not sure if you caught that in his reply or not) and was able to view his files OK.

EricB · 09-28-2008, 10:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by carnageX

He's able to view the files already because he said he slaved the drive (not sure if you caught that in his reply or not) and was able to view his files OK.

ok. save them and do a fresh install and follow this guide

How to keep WinXP really fast & stable

brad8266 · 09-29-2008, 10:32 PM

Just copy the windows\system32\config\system file from the good drive to the messed up drive. Ive done this a bunch of times on bad drives and it works everytime.

KurrentEweser · 09-29-2008, 10:53 PM

Actually all that needs to be done in windows\system32\config\ folder is to locate all the *.bak files and delete their extensionless counterparts. Then delete the .bak extension from each file. Windows will generate new backups the next successful boot. It wouldn't hurt to make copies of the .bak files.

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