[Macboatmaster]

D: MiniNT is your E machines factory installed recovery partition.
It will wipe everything and reinstall as per original factory condition.
YOU will lose all programs not installed when the computer was sold and everything installed since.


Make the Puppy CD please.

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I am offline for about an hour.

[Macboatmaster]

I am offline for about an hour.

[Skqck]

I have booted with the puppy cd now. I will wait for further instructions.

[Macboatmaster]

PUPPY is single click - no double click
Open the hard drive it will be shown on the puppy desktop
as per the guide.

Look now for the folder
System Volume Information

and open that.

You should now see a folder
_restore{with numbers and letters} open that folder.
You may have to open a few folders until you find the one with the RP entries

Post back when you are there

[Skqck]

After I click on system Volume Information, I only see two options, Mountpointman database and tracking log. Please advise

[Macboatmaster]

I am sorry to tel you that you have a problem.
I appreciate that you of course already knew that, but the problem may not be easily solved and all your programs and data kept.

This is what you should see
The System Volume Information folder
There is one Restore folder and a file
'MountPoint

JUST BEFORE we leave Puppy ON the same drive make sure you can see your docs and settings etc. your pictures etc and the windows directory, just to ensure you have opened the correct drive.

normally sda1

[Skqck]

Yes I checkED and I see documents and settings and pictures etc.

[Macboatmaster]

Ok
I do not know how much you know so do not be annoyed if I am insulting your knowledge.
Please remember that all I have is what you tell me.

May I say at this early stage you are so easy to work with.
That makes me think, that you may already know what the present problem is.

YOU HAVE no restore points, either you did no thave system restore turned on for the drive OR you have run something that has deleted them.for instance msconfig and the wrong clicks will delete all restore points.

So you will have gathered that we were hoping to use system restore, but the RC could not find them and PUPPY confirms they are not there.

We now have, I hope, three choices.

However before we proceed I need to confirm, exactly the error message when you attempt to boot.

If it does not stay on the screen, but simply enters a reboot cycle, key F8 after post screen and click disable restart on failure and then post me the full error message.

Of course take the Puppy out.

[Macboatmaster]

I have posted separately so you cannot miss it.

Please tell me when you are signing off for the night and I will as you have seen do the same.

That saves both of us waiting for a reply that is not arriving this session.

[Skqck]

I appreciate all the confidence you have in me. Now I know a little bit about computers but I'm not sure what is the exact problem. But in regards to the message that I receive upon boot up, it says, windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

You can attempt to repair this file by starting windows setup using the original setup cd rom.
Select "r" at the first screen to start repair.

[Macboatmaster]

OK
Just wanted to ensure that was the full message.

These are your choices.

1. Take the hard drive out of the computer, put it into another computer, running Xp, where you can easily access the files and you stand a reasonable chance of being able to replace the damaged files with backup files from the hard drive.

2. Return to RC and run chkdsk /r again and then run chkdsk /p (that is the same as chkdsk /f in cmd prompt in windows.) a couple of times, you may strike lucky it is rather large MAY

3. TRY to rebuild the registry from a series of cmds in recovery console. - it may or MAY NOT work depending on the amount of file corruption.

4. Go for recovery from the installed recovery partition., depending on how it is configured YOU may have a choice of SOFT recovery, rather than lose everything

5. Obtain - friends acquaintances etc a Microsoft XP Media Centre CD and attempt a repair install of windows -basically the same as the soft recovery if you have that option.

THERE is of course a risk, however small that any will fail.


Cannot remember now, without re-reading - what was the lead up to this error. - any history

[Skqck]

I think I will try options 2,3, and 4 and see what happens. To answer your question, the computer was unplug without properly being shut down. So I will start with option 2 and let you know If there are any changes. I will probably just post back tomorrow since the last time I ran the chkdsk it took about an hour.

[Macboatmaster]

Well in view of the cause option 2 is certainly your best bet at this stage.

Do you have another computer running XP., post the answer to that and if so I will send you another POSSIBLE solution, then I will sign off and I be back about 1730hrs UK time it is now 0049hrs

I have signed off see you tomorrow.

If that three times chkdsk does not work, then you MAY stand a chance with this

http://support.micro...spx?kbid=307545

but note the caution please re the OEM system - which is what your Gateway is -

OR grab the bull by the horns and try this - HOWEVER there is no going back once you start - the recovery system will warn you of that




NOTE please the caution re the last Important here. - of course you do not have the recovery discs you said.

[Skqck]

So I tried the CHKDSK /r/p several more times and it was a no go, so I'm now working on inputing the commands in Windows Recovery. My only concern is when I type in "md tmp" I receive a message that says, "A directory or file with the name tmp already exists." So I don't know if this is something that I should be worried about or not. Although, it seems to be allowing me to put in the other commands without a problem. So should I continue further with the procedure?

[Macboatmaster]

md tmp
that command creates a directory by the name of tmp

that is the md - make directory

If it says there is already a tmp directory then there should not be., unless you have run something before on this RC or for some reason created a directory of that name.

Whether it will work depends on what you answered to the message that it already exists
as the next cmd


copy c:\windows\system32\config\system c:\windows\tmp\system.bak
copies the system32\config\system file to the tmp directory and names it system.bak

then later on you are going to
copy c:\windows\tmp\system c:\windows\system32\config\system

copy them back again.

Therefore it depends on what was in the tmp directory, whether you selected the choice OVERWRITE etc.

The only answer now having started is to proceed. as you have already continued, as you say it allows me to put in the other cmds.