desktop computer ? damaged by the power cut last night?

viz

we had a series of short power cuts last night- no obvoius surge. The computer then decided not to start- we have windows xp DELL

you press the start button- it tries to load up windows ad you get a message that either this file is missing or curropted

\ WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM
it suggests we use the windows set up CD-ROM and press r to rectify the mistake??

the 3 years next buisness day fancy policy we had with dell ran out in Nov 2009- so we are not sure who to contact to avoid paying lots of money to get this fixed.

We have so far tried- in the process of the computer starting before it gives us this error messgae to press F12- but not sure where to go from here. We cannot find andn not sure if we ever had the CD-ROM thing sent ot us with the computer.

any advice would be much appreciated.

thanks

viz

I just found this on the dell website




Method 2Unable to Access the Desktop.1 Turn off the computer.
2 Turn on the computer and press the F8 key every other second until the Windows Advanced Options window appears.
3 Press the <Down Arrow> key on the keyboard and select Safe Mode with Command Prompt.
4 Press the <Enter> key on the keyboard.
5 Log in as the administrator or as a user with administrator rights.
6 At the command prompt (blinking cursor), type:
C:\Windows\system32\restore\rstrui.exe
and then press the <Enter> key.
If Windows XP has been reinstalled to a different location on this computer, change C:\Windows to the new path.
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Dell Solution Network: Knowledge Base Article


should i try it??

exup

probably what some people would suggest anyway - give it a try

viz

OK AFTER STEP 4-
there is no where to log in as adminstrator- it only gives you one option of choosing to start with the windows xp system-
there is no wheer to type the command either

pressing enter brings me back to the begining of the same error message of the files being missing or corrupted !

reading more on the Dell website forum etc- there is alot of advice of trying to back up before trying to reinstall etc

it really does look like i am going to have to spend some money getting professional advice-

exup

do you get a message of which file is actually missing or corrupted?

viz

Hi exup sorry for the delay

all it says is the following is either missing or corrupted:

\windows\system32\config\system

Nothing so far has worked and after doing a little more trawling- I am wary of persisting in the re boot fiddling incase i make things worse.

I think my priority is to try to save any files possible first ( if that is possible?!). Going to try giving Dell a call- from past memories it can be painfull - BUT they can remotely access the computer and maybe let us know what the problem is

we are also based in west yorks- so if you can recommend anyone that may be able to reveiw the laptop face to face so to speak that would be great.

closed

They can't remotely access it if it won't boot, and anything they or a pro suggest can be done by yourself using advice on here. The question of how to get it working, and how to get your data back has been asked many times before on here.

Try safemode command prompt F8 at boot, and run chkdsk c: /R, your registry is corrupt, the rest of the files are probably fine.

diable

The registry is corrupted have a look here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545