Windows 2000 Expert Needed

My life may actually be over this time.

Won't boot. winnt\system32\cofig\system is missing or corrupt (it says)

It's not missing, so it must be corrupt. I can boot from the
installation CD and use the Recovery Console to look at the disk. The
file isn't missing so it must be corrupt. I tried using the Recovery
floppy disk. It said it fixed the problem, but it didn't. I installed a
fresh copy of Windows on a spare drive, booted up using that drive, and
tried to copy the corrupt from the good drive to the one that didn't
boot. It said it couldn't copy the file.

There's a system.sav and system.alt file on the disk. Tried copying
each of those to system and it still didn't boot. (same error message).


What to do next? Everything I try seems to make things a little worse
so I really need to quit while I still have a readable, but not
bootable disk. I'd do the "re-install Windows" thing that I shy away
from, but there doesn't seem to be a nice way to do this with Win2000,
at least using the CD that I have, which is an upgrade version.. The
only options for installing Windows are to reformat the disk or to use
the present file system with the warning that much useful stuff (My
Documents and all applications) will be deleted.

Am I missing a secret? Or will I have to re-install all of my
applications on a new disk?

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: NTLDR is missing
    ... Make sure that there are no disks in any removable drives when you boot. ... NTLDR is missing, why does it happen? ... Computer hard disk drive is not properly setup in BIOS. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)
  • Re: Catastrophic Corruption of Dynamic Disks
    ... In attempting to recover the boot device from our failure of dynamic disks, ... Made the Simple partition Active, probably from Disk Management in ERD ... Ran chkdsk /r from the Windows 2003 recovery console. ... about the disk being corrupt, and the Windows 2003 boot sequence never ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.general)
  • Re: SBS 2003 - Hal.dll Getting Currupt
    ... When "hal.dll missing or corrupt" message appears, it can be because of damaged or missing hal.dll file. ... Go to Boot Menu in BIOS and verify that your hard disk which contains Windows installation is the topmost in boot sequence if you have more than one hard disk. ... "Les Connor" wrote in message ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: Suggestions, PLZ, for Win-based HDD diagnostic utilities & procedures
    ... That message means that the Windows registry is corrupt. ... it could be due to disk corruption, ... the boot menu. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Catastrophic Corruption of Dynamic Disks
    ... Try to separate the boot process from the Windows startup process, ... Made the Simple partition Active, probably from Disk Management in ERD ... about the disk being corrupt, and the Windows 2003 boot sequence never ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.general)