WinXP Crashed an Won\'t Boot

[dmazur]

WinXP crashed on me yesterday and I can no longer get it to boot. i get the message \"File missing or corrupt: windowssystem32configsystem\". The problem is that I only have a win98 startup disk, and when I try to launch windows startup from the winxp startup disk, i get the message, \"This program cannot be run in Dos mode.

I remember seeing something similar in this forum somewhere but i can\'t find it now.

Please help!

[austin]

that happend to me in the past its a crash problem when canceling some services cant really remember which

anyway if you dont want this to happen again youll better download service pack 1 it will fix it and many other things

[austin]

i forgot to help you about the other issue the issue that you cant run it on ms-dos you can just not the autorun
just enter the cd and type : cd i386
and then type : winnt

after that it wll enter the windows setup

note for win2k/winxp setup programs  - they will run smooth only if youll load smartdrv.exe first  (on win9x/me boot disks there is no smartdrv.exe well you said you have the win98 bootdisk so well if you have another computer with Win98 or you know someone with win98 installed then search the windows directory (including subfolders) and find smartdrv.exe after youll find it copy it to your a:
after youll finish booting from the diskete type : smartdrv
then enter the setup like i said before

option 2 : just incase all the stuff i said is to hard to do or if your too lazy to do em - if your windows xp cd is bootable
then enter the bios and arrange it will check boot from the cd
and there ya go it will enter the windows setup

if your cd is bootable or not i suggest youll use your win98 bootdisk to format your c: drive before running the windows xp setup (format.com is found on the virtual ram drive thats created by the rescue disk) or on the rescue disk itself cant remember try em both

and well if you converted your c: drive to a ntfs file system thats bad ntfs cannot be readed in dos and i doubt format.com can handle ntfs
if you had converted your c: drive to a ntfs just access the installation without doing format first hopefully it will work
and if it wont:
you know the story : fdisk>delete all drives>recreate primary partition>format
(when entering fdisk it will ask Y/N press Y because Y=FAT32 N =FAT16)

last note - if you have an upgrade version all i said was for nothing upgrade versions cannot be ran\'d from ms-dos

[Akasha]

I had a simular situation after loading serv pk 1 and microsoft tech taught me how to repair disk....go into bios 1rst and change your 1st boot up to cd then floppy then hard drive. reboot with xp cd in and prompt from there to repair. Youre basically re-installing xp but not formatting.