Good luck with the Best Buy guys. Like any tech shop, there will be
smart folks and not-so-smart folks in the lab. It's kind of a crapshoot
which one will sit down at this machine to work on it, though.
I've had a very good experience with the locl 'Geek Squad' from the local
Best Buy in the suburbs of Detroit.
Fixed my issues and then some, also sold me the hardware at employee pricing
!
Kenneth Waller
http://www.tinyurl.com/272u2f
----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Robinson" <charl...@visi.com>
Subject: Re: OT: Need help from a PC guru
On Oct 7, 2009, at 12:47, paul stenquist wrote:
My daughter has a custom built PC. It's about four years old, and I'm
not sure what processor is in it. It runs Windows XP and was fine until
recently. Now she can't seem to get it to boot, and she can't afford to
get help. I'm useless when it comes to PCs. Here's her description of
the problem. Can anyone give us a clue?
On startup I get this error message: "Windows XP could not start because
the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS
\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM"
That's one of the three "registry hives". There are a few possibilities:
1. A disk error is preventing that file from loading/reading properly.
If that were the case, a simple tool like "spinrite" (approx $80 and
lovely tool to have in your bag of tricks) could likely fix the problem
and you're on your way.
2. The file itself is corrupted even though the disk is good. If this is
the case, it's restore from backup or reinstall. But you've said that
the reinstall is not working either (which is weird), so
3. Could be a RAM problem, or motherboard problem - just hangs up while
reading the file even though that file might be fine. Hard to fix. But
if you download Memtest-86 (freeware!) and burn it to a CD, you can run
this software on that machine and see if there is a memory issue.
http://www.memtest86.com/ -- free download, just pull down the ISO image
and burn it yourself.
Last possiblity:
4. Some sort of virus is on the PC. You'd need to boot from some other
disc and scan the drive to remove whatever it is. This can be a
challenge.
Good luck with the Best Buy guys. Like any tech shop, there will be
smart folks and not-so-smart folks in the lab. It's kind of a crapshoot
which one will sit down at this machine to work on it, though. Too bad
you aren't closer to Minnesota - I'd take a look at it for you for
nuttin'!
-Charles
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