I am having some problems with a machine. This machine has two hard drives, one is a 40 gig the other is a 120 gig. The main windows partition is on the 120 gig because the 40 gig crashed prior to this incident. The 40 gig is still accessible through windows and all the data is still readable, it is just not bootable. It gives a blue screen immediately following the windows splash screen that says that the file c:\windows\system32\config\software is missing, corrupt or unreadable and that I should fix it.
So, instead of fixing the problem, the person simply got another hard drive (120 gig) and used it for awhile. The other day I did an adaware scan on the 120 gig hard drive and the 40 gig hard drive. As it was scanning the d: drive (40 gig) norton popped up saying it found two viruses and deleted them. Then I got a blue screen and I restarted my machine. Now whenever I start windows using the 120 gig as the master hard drive, I get an error immediately following dell's splash screen saying that the file c:\windows\system32\config\system is missing or corrupt. Restart windows using the XP cd and use the restore option. From there I tried running a checkdisk and that took forever eventually leading to a blue screen around 70 percent. So, i tried a fix recommended at this site http://www.digitalwebcast.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=8658-1, but there was no directory called c:\windows\repair so that didn't work. Also, during recovery console I would randomely get the blue screen. So I was thinking maybe hardware, however, I removed all ram and tried and that didn't fix problem, maybe a heating problem, but sometimes it will freeze pretty quikly, so I don't know. I am completely out of options. Maybe someone here can help. Thank you so much in advance.
So, instead of fixing the problem, the person simply got another hard drive (120 gig) and used it for awhile. The other day I did an adaware scan on the 120 gig hard drive and the 40 gig hard drive. As it was scanning the d: drive (40 gig) norton popped up saying it found two viruses and deleted them. Then I got a blue screen and I restarted my machine. Now whenever I start windows using the 120 gig as the master hard drive, I get an error immediately following dell's splash screen saying that the file c:\windows\system32\config\system is missing or corrupt. Restart windows using the XP cd and use the restore option. From there I tried running a checkdisk and that took forever eventually leading to a blue screen around 70 percent. So, i tried a fix recommended at this site http://www.digitalwebcast.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=8658-1, but there was no directory called c:\windows\repair so that didn't work. Also, during recovery console I would randomely get the blue screen. So I was thinking maybe hardware, however, I removed all ram and tried and that didn't fix problem, maybe a heating problem, but sometimes it will freeze pretty quikly, so I don't know. I am completely out of options. Maybe someone here can help. Thank you so much in advance.