[ferndoodle]

Hi,
I started having problems with my HP Pavilion ze 4300 laptop a few days ago. I had been using it and shut it down. When I tried to boot it up the next time, I had a black screen saying I had registry problems and corrupted files. I didn't know how to repair them so I decided to reinstall Windows XP. Yesterday the same thing happened after I had updated my antivirus program on the computer. This is what was on the screen:

The following file is missing or corrupted: HIMEM.SYS
There is an error in your CONFIG.SYS file on line 21

The following file is missing or corrupted: RAMDRIVE.SYS
There is an error in your CONFIG.SYS file on line 31

Warning: the high memory area (HMA) is not available. Additional low memory (below 640K) will be used instead

The following file is missing or corrupted: COMMAND.COM
Type the name of the Command Interpreter (e.g. C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM)
a: >

I'm suspecting that my Windows XP installation cds are corrupt in some way since I come up with these problems even after reinstalling it. Could someone out there find a solution to fixing this?

ferndoodle

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are you able to boot into safe mode? Are you able to boot to the install cd? I understood from your post that you re-installed windows xp and it was working until you updated your anti virus. Was this a clean format and re-install? If you can boot into safe mode you could try going to start, run and type sfc /scannow You will need to have your windows install cd in the cd drive so windows can get the files it needs.

[austin_o]

are you able to boot into safe mode? Are you able to boot to the install cd? I understood from your post that you re-installed windows xp and it was working until you updated your anti virus. Was this a clean format and re-install? If you can boot into safe mode you could try going to start, run and type sfc /scannow You will need to have your windows install cd in the cd drive so windows can get the files it needs.

[ferndoodle]

Austin,

Thank you for your reply to my problem. I am happy to say that I finally was able to get Windows to come back up. I updated my antivirus program and then rebooted to safe mode to run it. This time it was able to clean out the 3 viruses that my computer had and since then it's been running fine.

I appreciate you offering me your assistance. I just couldn't get out of that black screen. I'm not sure what I did but I'm just glad it's running ok again.

ferndoodle