HOW TO: Repair Windows XP in Eight Commands
Most of us have seen it at one time or another; perhaps on our own PC, the PC of a loved one,
or perhaps a PC at your place of employment. The system spends weeks or months operating in a smooth fashion, taking you to the far reaches of the wide, wibbly web, and after one particularly late evening of browsing and gaming, you shut your PC off and go to bed. Millions of people across the globe do just this every night, but a few of us have turned our PCs on the next day not to the standard Windows XP loading screen, but instead this dreaded error:
Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM
You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup
using the original Setup CD-ROM.
Select ‘R’ at the first screen to start repair.
Which renders your PC inaccessible from the standard boot procedures of Windows XP. You try safe mode, to no avail. You’re particularly savvy and try issuing the FIXBOOT and FIXMBR commands in the Windows recovery console, but after each reboot, you’re merely greeted with the same obnoxious and terrifying blue screen of death that’s preventing you from accessing your precious data. Repairing Windows XP in Eight Commands - Guide - Short-Media