busted pc can it be fixed? HELP!!!

[polarbert]

my pc recently started to go really slow for no reason, i hadnt done anything but it was really sluggish, so i restored to a previous point, that did no good, then i tried restoring even further back in time, the system restore was going really really slow, and then it stopped, so i turned my pc off at the power button :(

i tried booting up again and it says that some configuration file is missing

it says:

"windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\windows\system32\config\system"

it says that in dos, and wont let me do anything else except insert a reload cd which puts the pc back to its out-of-the-box condition


being an idiot i havent backed up anything, but its all still there, i have another pc, is their ANY possible way i could network them together and get the important stuff i needed from the one which doesnt work, or do i need to set up a network on both pcs to be able to share files


hope somebody can help

thanks in advance

[pdV6]

Best bet would be to remove the hard disk drive, pop it in the working PC as a slave and recover your files that way.

[polarbert]

pdV6 said:

Best bet would be to remove the hard disk drive, pop it in the working PC as a slave and recover your files that way.

yeah that would have been good, i kind of forget some fundamental information though, the broken pc is a laptop, the working one is a desktop, i dont think a laptop hard drive would go into a desktop would it?

plus i wouldnt have a clue about taking my laptop apart!

[pdV6]

You can get an adaptor cable/dongle that will allow your laptop HDD to connect to a "standard" PC IDE cable if needs be. As for getting at the HDD of the laptop, they're usually fairly easy to get at but exactly how depends on make/model.

[rsvmilly]

If you've got your original system disks I believe you can do a 'repair' installation.

Will it start up in safe mode, with networking?

[zaktoo]

I would recommend that you buy an external hard drive enclosure (& spare hard drive) that works through USB, and then use an appropriate Linux Live CD to boot off, or possibly even some flavour of MS Windows, although I don't know much about the workings of the MS boot disk stuff, and copy files off laptop to external hard drive. Reformat laptop, and reinstall, and you should be ok. Just keep your pc virus-free and run firewalls etc. The external hard drive could also obviously be used on your main PC and you have a cheap and effective simple backup solution in place too.

I forget the brand of external hard drive that I have used happily in the past, but I'm sure you can find one quite easily.

Good luck mate

Ciao

Zak

[arcturus]

This error message is symptomatic of a corrupt registry and there is a documented Microsoft fix here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545

I have done this successfully several times, but you do need a proper Windows CD not a manufacturues recovery CD.

>> Edited by arcturus on Thursday 26th May 21:26

[polarbert]

thanks for all the help, took it to a specialist, paid 70 quid and got the whole thing sorted, and got to keep a lot of my previous stuff.


well worth the money, as my pc is running fine not a problem with it!


thanks again