My Home Pc is running Win xp Home. it is an OEM from Dixons and unfortunatly i seem unable to get a copy of the Disk from Source. Following a series of Blue Screens (varied Errors without any apparent solution) my PC essentially gave up booting altogether. There was a message that flashed up saying "missing Registry file" and "System 32". I panicked somewhat and because i couldnt boot into the Hard drive, I used a smaller Hard Disk that had Win XP Pro on it and used that as the OS which enabled me to at least access all my documents and photos. However i cannot get the Original HD to boot up i have no way of knowing which registry file is missing. is there a printable list of the file names that should be in System 32 or someway of locating the missing file and copying it from xp pro. I know it is a bit involved but i am tearing my ramaining hair out and this place has been helpful before
Hi,before you sling that h/d down the road, try this...boot up and immidiately press and hold down the F8 key. this should give you the option to restore to a -KNOWN GOOD BOOT UP-, which you select, and (hopefully) boot up to your desktop..good luck.
pmibm
January 2007
You could try restoring to the ' last known working boot' (it's something like that). Restart and press F12 (or it might be F2) Anyway this will give you the option to restore to the last known working bootup. Doesn't always work but its worth a go.
Russ
December 2006
There are some very useful documents on www.microsoft.com that deal with corrupted registries. I had a similar problem and fixed it using stuff I found there - it took three days though. I put that down to a steep learning curve. Just punch in your EXACT error and helpful stuff will appear.
howtomendit.com for free repair help, information and advice.
Try fixfault.com to fix desktop pcs.