Hellp! Windows cannot start

[kappah]

Hello,

please i need help urgently and i know i am in the right place. I wanted to re-install my windows xp home edition. it started well but after a while the computer shut down itself. I thought the battery was discharged. when i put it back on, the re-installation continued. after a while the following message was displayed by the computer:

"windows could not start because the following file is missing:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

you can attempt to repair this file by starting windows using the original setup CD-ROM.select 'r' at the first screen to start repair"

unfortunately, i dont have the setup CD-ROM to do the repair. Please does anyone have any suggestions on how i can approach this problem. i tried starting it on safemode, but got thesame message. i simply cannot log in.

system information:

notebook model-compaq presario V2000

Procesor type- mobile AMD Semptron

processor speed-1600 mhz

bios version- f.13

system memory- 256.

please reply. i welcome all suggestions

[Ponch]

I wanted to re-install my windows xp home edition. it started well but ...

...

unfortunately, i dont have the setup CD-ROM to do the repair.

Are you reinstalling from a "recovery partition" ?

Have you retried that ?

[majormashup]

If your computer is not under warranty you should still be able to contact the manufacturer and get a "recovery CD" (usually in the form of an OEM XP installation with OEMBIOS files for activation) you will be able to use this to either run the repair function (in my experience not very good), use the recovery console or reinstall windows.

My first recommendation however would be to run checkdisk from the recovery console to make sure it is not a case of your HDD failing.

If your disk is failing or you cannot recover windows I'd recommend booting an ubuntu live CD, backing up your important files and reinstalling windows either on a new or existing drive (dependant on the result of your diskchecking)

hope some of this helps!