W2K will not boot - missing folder

[Hammertime]

Hi guys,

I have a W2k workstation that will not boot as it displays that the \WINNT\System32\Config\System is missing or corrupt. Setup CD cannot repair as it can't find the installation of Windows. Will not boot in safe mode either. Is there anything I can do apart from reinstalling?

Thanks,

Hammertime

 

[tonykblen]

Have you got a systems/boot disk to startup?

If you have a boot disk, you should be able to get to the command prompt and look to see if the directory is there or not.

What happened to the PC prior to booting it up?

Any new software installed?

Tony.

Tony Kennedy BSc. B.I.S.,
MCSA Cand.

A good start is half the work.
Every start is difficult .
-Two Gaelic proverbs

 

[Hammertime]

Hi,

No boot/repair floppy, we have so many PC's we can't keep one for each! If the folder is missing, I can't just copy one from another W2k PC can I?

The user informs me that she has been away and when she turned the PC on it displayed the error message.

Nothing new has been installed,

Thanks

Hammertime

 

[tonykblen]

You don't need a specific floppy per machine! If you have a another PC with professional then you can use an existing/make a new disk with that and put it in the faulty machine.

Chances are you will need to re-install though because you cannot copy the system folder from one PC to another. Have had a similar experience a couple of months ago where the hard disk failed on my machine with similar symptoms.

If you get the boot disk going, you mya be able to run scandisk and check the drive for bad sectors, clusters etc. If errors start appearing here, then it could be the hard disk, but it is extremely hard to diagnose something like this.

Two other things to mention:

If you have a group of similar machines, it can be useful to have a ghost image of the disk with all the software installed in order to facilitate a quick recovery. All you would then need to do is restore user data files (which should be backed up)

Installing the recovery console on all 2000 machines is useful. See Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 307654 for more info.

Tony

Tony Kennedy BSc. B.I.S.,
MCSA Cand.

A good start is half the work.
Every start is difficult .
-Two Gaelic proverbs

 

[wolluf]

Its not a folder - its a file, one of the registry hives.

Can you get into recovery console?

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;229716.

If you can, first thing I'd try is running chkdsk, and then restarting. If that doesn't work, you can try this (from recovery console):-

copy \WINNT\System32\Config\system \WINNT\System32\Config\system.bak
copy \WINNT\System32\Config\system.alt \WINNT\System32\Config\system

Exit to reboot.

If no good, could try a repair reinstall (not a repair). Boot from 2k install cD - choose new install (not repair). It should find existing installation and offer repair (if it doesn't exit). Accept the repair option (type R) - goes through something like normal install, but leaves data, apps, settings intact (loses windows updates).

PS. Would be nice to know cause - so you can prevent it happening again when you do get back up.

 

[Hammertime]

Thanks for your replies,

Yes i'm looking into Ghosting, however we have about 10 makes of PC here (unfortunately the pervious administrator wasn't very organised). When we do our next buy in of Public Access PC's they will all be the same make, model etc! Budget also limits on licensing for Norton Ghost.

Chkdsk /r hangs on 50% and Chkdsk /p said there was more than one error on the drive. When booting the PC normally the HD tends to hand on a particular sector and it doesn't sound too healthy when it does! I'm guessing it's a hardware failure on the drive so will swap it with new. User files are saved on a remote drive so only have to reinstall O/S + software.

Thanks again,

Hammertime

 

[JPLWU]

Same thing happened to this computer I was working on...did you try re-formatting the hdd? If so did it work? If not was the hard drive actually bad? Just wondering whether or not I should take the time to reformat the next time I see this problem.

 

[wolluf]

JPLWU - this sort of problem can be just a 'glitch' (which chkdsk, for example will fix), or it can be a symptom of something more serious - usually a hardware issue of some kind)

 

[Hammertime]

I haven't reformatted the drive as there under warranty so might as well just get a new drive in as there is no data saved on it. I suppose you could put the drive in as a slave and check it in Disk Manager on another W2k to see if it has bad sectors.

 

[SpotLizard]

Have you tried chkdsk /f ?

Regards.

SL

 

[Hammertime]

Nope, but they drive has been replaced now!

Hammertime