My wife was off today, at home, all alone, trying to play Spades with her mother over the internet.
Suddenly things freeze up and go south. She fears some kind of cyber virus. She tries to close down the programs, but everything just seems to freeze.
So she calls me at work, and unplugs everything.
Then when she tries to get it back up, she gets an error message. We are running Windows XP Pro. The "system" file in windows/system32/config directory has been corrupted.
The CD's of XP pro have vanished during our move last year.
I have a CD from my portable--for XP Home, but all it wants to do is re-partition the drive. Won't that kill all the pictures and data we have on that drive?
Any ideas?
Posted by Pegasus (Member # 10464) on :
Basic steps I would suggest would be to try and start in "safe mode" and run an anti-virus? But maybe it's too late for that...
re-partitioning the drive may not erase everything like formating will, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
Anyone more help than me?
Posted by Elmer's Glue (Member # 9313) on :
I had the same problem and lost everything. So um, good luck I guess.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
Repartitioning is *more* destructive than formatting, though you don't want to do either if there is data on the hard drive that you don't want to lose. You're probably going to need to find another XP Pro disc and try using the "Repair" option in the install.
Posted by Xann. (Member # 11482) on :
I looked on Windows website, this link should be helpful. It promises to save your data atleast.
quote:The "system" file in windows/system32/config directory has been corrupted.
Xann linked to the article I was going to use.
Corrupted registry file. You can try to restore that registry hive from a previous 'restore point'. If you can do this, then Windows should boot up and you'll have access to your data. You'll probably wind up reinstalling Windows quite soon. (In fact, once you salvage your data, I'd recommend it.)
Posted by Armoth (Member # 4752) on :
I had the same problem.
My dad is in software development. He sat at the computer for 2 hours doing random things and saved the entire computer. Worked great for another year.
Not that I have any idea what he did - but there is hope!!!
Posted by MidnightBlue (Member # 6146) on :
My computer caught a virus this weekend. I followed the steps at:
(I didn't make that a link because I think it's probably better that you can see where I'm sending you.) I think I've gotten rid of all of mine, but I caught my own virus yesterday so I haven't had a chance to go over everything with a fine toothed comb yet.
Just be careful looking at their list of programs that start automatically. I got rid of something I shouldn't have, and had to reinstall. I didn't lose any data, but I came really close to screwing things up for myself big time.
ETA: Okay, so it made it a link anyway. Whatever.
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
quote: Repartitioning is *more* destructive than formatting, though you don't want to do either if there is data on the hard drive that you don't want to lose. You're probably going to need to find another XP Pro disc and try using the "Repair" option in the install.
The first thing I would try, and this has saved more then one computer I have worked on, is to:
Open the command prompt ("Start-all programs-accessories-command prompt" if you don't know the shortcut)
Type in "chkdsk c: /f /r" without the quotes where c: is your primary hard drive letter
Choose YES when it asks if you want to do it on restart
Restart machine and let it do it's thing
If you absolutely cannot get it to log on, then MattP's idea is probably the best. If you can't find a disk you can take out the hard drive and put it in another computer that is powered off.
When you turn on that computer your hard drive will probably have a different drive letter--like e: or something. Open the command prompt and type in "chkdsk e: /f /r" without the quotes where e: is your hard drive letter that needs fixed.
A long time ago, before everything went to sata, I bought a cheap usb external hard drive and took it apart. I could then easily swap hard drives in the the external USB hard drive and plug it into my computer to either fix them or rescue data.
If you don't have a XP disk to make the GUI version, you can download directly the original version which is used via the command line interface.
If you get either of those boot disks you can find the tool (like check disk) to fix errors on your hard drive.
Note about "chkdsk c: /f /r" : "chkdsk" checks the disk for errors "c:" is the drive letter of the disk you are checking. "/f" fixes errors on the disk. "/r" attempts to recover data on bad sectors and put it on healthy sectors. (implies /f).
*There are spaces between those fields.
EDIT
quote: I think I've gotten rid of all of mine, but I caught my own virus yesterday so I haven't had a chance to go over everything with a fine toothed comb yet.
The nice thing about UBCD4WIN is that when you build your disk you can update like 3 or 4 anti virus programs, as well as adaware, spybot, and a few others. Sometimes running antivirus from the computer won't delete the bad file because it is in use, even in safemode.
If you boot from UBCD4win you can run those tools on your computer with confidence that the malicious files won't be in use.
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