Hello Everyone: I was praying that someone here can help me?
I have a compaq presario laptop with no floppy drive.
Last night tried to start and received this error.
Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SOFTWARE
I have tried this procedure as described on the MS site,
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307545
but problem is the the repair folder is missing the system file so nothing to copy.
(copy c:\windows\repair\system c:\windows\system32\config\system)
I have been trying to repair and searching online for 9 hours straight now and cannot resolve the problem.
I have tried to do the install repair from disk but do not get the "R" option for repair as I am guessing it is not recognizing xp already on harddrive. I can get into the recovery console from the disk.
I have to find some way to get the data off of the laptop as I have 100's of hours worth of work on the laptop not including all of the pictures, etc.
Any help would be apreciated
Is there anyway that I could maybe partition the hard drive and load windows to the separate partition and get access to my files that way? Am I reaching, LOL?
Any help is greatly appreciated