XP Pro: "Windows cannot start becausethe following file..."

[NCYankee1]

I have a 3 year old Dell Dimension 8100 (1.8GHz processor, 512mb ram, 60gb Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive, 32mb NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 4X AGP graphics card, 48x cd drive)that had run W2K Professional through its entire life. Over the past few months it began to have problems (hanging when trying to reboot, etc). Until finally last month it wouldn't boot up and I was getting a "Windows cannot start because the following file is either missing or corrupt.." message. I decided to start over. I upgraded to WXP Professional (formatted the drive and installed clean). Everything has worked fine for the past month. Until this morning. When I went to use the computer it was frozen. The mouse moved, but that's all. I had IE6 open and Musicmatch Jukebox. (By the way, I have loaded nothing to this computer except MusicMatch, drivers for an Epson scanner and an Olympus sigital camera). I was forced to pull the plug. When it tried to reboot I got the error message "Windows cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupt. windows\system32\config\system", and no file was specified. I tried reinstalling XP Pro but it said things were so messed up that I would need to reformat and start over. My question is this:

Does anyone have an idea of what causes this? Could it be a bad hard drive (although I did a chkdsk last month and it came up clean) or some other hardware in the computer?

If I reformat and reload XP, what measures should I take to ensure I can reboot and fix any problem like this without having to blow all my stuff away? I was lucky this time because there really is nothing on the computer that I don't have backed up. Is there a boot or recovery disk I can make?

Thanks for your help.

 

[bcastner]

thread779-847089

 

[pmonett]

MusicMatch seems to be a peer-to-peer client.
You state that the only software that you have installed is MusicMatch and a few peripheral drivers. In other words, you have used the connection services without a firewall, or an anti-virus tool. It therefore stands to reason that your PC might have been "owned" by a hacker, or maybe MusicMatch downloaded a virus-infected file.

The next time you reinstall your PC, I would suggest going pronto to Firewall.com and picking one of the good, free versions available (Tiny Personal Firewall is my favorite).
Then, go to Free-AV and get yourself a free (for personal use) anti-virus that is regularly updated (for free too).

Once you have installed these components, you can then reinstall MusicMatch and use it with less threat to the integrity of your machine.

Pascal.

 

[NCYankee1]

bcastner: Thanks for the thread. But it isn't working for me. When I enter repair mode I just get a c:\ prompt. It doesn't ask what installation I want to log into or anything. And it recognizes no folders. And even if I do a dir it tells me an error occurred during folder enumeration. When I tried doing an md temp it told me access denied.

pmonett: I also had Norton installed. And I thought the XP firewall was good enough. Is that not so? Also, this problem occurred last month (under W2K) as well and MusicMatch was not on it. I did have Norton AntiVirus and Zone Alarm running. And also I am behind a linksys router. So I figured I was pretty well covered. This is why i was asking if this might be some sort of hardware problem causing this.

I am going to go ahead and reinstall Windows XP. Is there restore diskettes or something I can make that will help me next time this happens? How can I test to see what is causing this problem?

Thanks!

 

[allteltec]

Me guest would be hard drive going bad, C:\Windows\system32\config\software "software" is the missing file one of 5 registry files needed to boot XP. I would boot from CD to the repair console and run Dskchk /r you mite get lucky. Also there is a manual fix I have lost the link to, you should be able to recover from.
Bcaster posted link a while back to manual fix this type of problem. Before Bart_pe I had bat files to do first part of repair. Now I just boot Bart_Pe and drag the backup files from the restore directory to the config directory and rename them. Got to love that Bart_Pe.
Doing a repair install will not fix this try of problem.

 

[allteltec]

Located Bcasters link

http://www.digitalwebcast.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=8658

 

[shmoes]

http://www.networkclue.com/os/Windows/commands/sfc.php

Last resort as the site states, you must have original cd, it will not work of cab files.

command prompt sfc /purgecache then sfc /scannow

~Shmoes

 

[linney]

I would recommend that you download a free hard drive diagnostic program from your harddrive manufacturer's url. This will tell you the condition of your hard drive and if you can recover from it.

How to Set up and Use Automated System Recovery in Windows XP

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/itpro/managing/asr.asp

You may need a second partition for ASR to work properly.

298278 - ASR Restore Procedure Does Not Succeed When You Specify Drive C as the Destination for the Backup File

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;298278&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

Although the articles says ASR will not backup data files it does backup and restore everything that is contained in all the users Documents and Settings folders and subfolders as long as they are on the same partition as windows. It will not gather anything from other partitions on your drive. That information can be backed up separately.

When it comes to restoring, the ASR kicks in after Formatting your Windows Partition, copying setup files,installing Devices and Networks via the XP setup, booted from the XP CD and pointed to use ASR via pressing F2 (just after the F6 request is the F2 request) early in the setup procedure.

Even if the partition you are restoring is not "C" (your Boot Partition) it is advisable to run a ChkDsk on this boot partition before restoring with ASR as it can avoid multiple formats of the to be recovered partition caused by Setup checking the boot partition for errors after it formats the to be recovered partition. If Setup finds any errors on your boot partition the whole process will abort and need to be restarted from scratch.

For more information about other recovery options or using backup, follow these steps:
Click Start, and then click Help and Support.
Do one of the following:
In the Search box, type repair overview and then click Start Searching.

-or-
In the Search box, type using backup, and then click Start Searching




Emergency boot floppy.

Copy ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini to floppy to boot your XP installation. These are hidden and System files (make sure options are set to see them).

How to Use System Files to Create a Boot Disk to Guard Against Being Unable to Start Windows XP (Q314079)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q314/0/79.asp

Q305595 - HOW TO: Create a Boot Disk for an NTFS or FAT Partition in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q305/5/95.asp

Many people recommend software like Ghost for imaging drives.

 

[shmoes]

glad it all worked out

thx for the star

~Shmoes

 

[NCYankee1]

Well now I am pretty sure what the problem is. I just went to reboot and I am now getting this message:

"WARNING: Dell's Disk Monitoring System has detected that drive 0 on the primary EIDE controller is operating outside of normal specifications. It is adviseable to immediately back up your data and replace your hard drive by calling your support desk or Dell Computer Corporation."

Sounds like I should replace the hard drive before doing anything, huh?

 

[bcastner]

That is a S.M.A.R.T. enabled drive warning. It has been my experience that if it throws the error you should take it seriously.

Replace the drive.

 

[shmoes]

whoops, i can't believe i posted that in the wrong thread .. lol musta had to many tabs open

lol

~Shmoes

 

[NCYankee1]

I think the curtain can come down on this thread. I got a new HD today and we are back up and running. I'm pretty cinfident that will be that. Thanks to all who offered assistance. And Shmoes, you said you posted that reply in the wrong thread but in fact you didn't. You were just ahead of your time. Thanks to all who helped me!

 

[pmonett]

That makes it rather official, indeed.

For future protection, I would suggest purchasing Ghost, another Norton product. Ghost will allow you to take snapshots of your system and use them to restore to another disk if necessary. Ghost is better than system restore because you don't need XP to use it, and you can ghost an image back to a new disk if you have to. I've been using Ghost for almost a decade now. I can't even begin to count how many hours this little app has saved me.
As for XPs firewall, to put it bluntly : no, it is not even halfway enough. Turn it off, and get a real firewall product. One that monitors incoming AND outgoing, with the necessary logs and forensic tools to tell you what happened and when, and give you the possibility of adjusting exactly what you want the way you want it.
The XP firewall (even with SP2) is the most basic firewall-for-dummies you can get, made for users who cannot manage anything concerning security. With your hardware setup, you can and should get something that protects you in fact, not just in name.

Pascal.