Have I killed my desktop?

poorbabe

I'd been having problems with my desktop for about a month. I took it to my local repair shop and they claimed to have fixed the problem, but within an hour of using it, it started freezing or rebooting unexpectedly.

I took it to the guy who built it for me. He checked it for about 2 weeks and he said it worked fine. However, once home I installed the 02 McAfee security centre, Firefox, Thunderbird and then it started crashing. Even whilst I went to remove the programs and do a system restore.

The air was blue on Sunday whilst I tried to sort this out. I even attempted to reboot using the boot disk my friend created but all I've been getting is:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt " /windows/system32/configsystem. You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows setup using original CD Rom. Select 'r' at the first screen to start repair.

However whenever I start the machine with or without the boot disk in the DVD drive, it throws up the above message and I can't get it to do anything else.

Does anyone think something can be done to 'bring it back' or should I take out the innards and get mate to build me another one/buy from the shops?

In the meantime I'm using a laptop is an IBM T22 and about 6 years old with an almost useless battery which I'll change as well as upgrade the RAM from its present 384mb to 512mb.

Thanks in advance.

poorbabe

Loaner, thanks for your quick response. I'll give it a go on Monday as I'm away for the weekend.

AdrianHi

The registry (and other files) can become corrupt if power is cut at just the wrong time or the hard disk is on it's last legs.
If you do manage to get the machine started, back up your files straight away in case a new disk is what's needed.

poorbabe

Adrianhi, fortunately the only thing on the drive that I'll miss are recent episodes of Bones my computer bod downloaded for me.

Not looked at the desktop yet but will report back during the week when I've done so.