Guys, been having problems booting up, ive put my xp boot disk in and booted up the recovery console, having thought i might have got a virus, i checked some of my back up drives by typing d:\dir etc..and so on.. which it then brings up the directories within that hard disk...which was all ok. Now when i done the same procedure to my system drive c:\ i get this message c:\>dir directory of c:\ An error occurred during directory enumeration c:\> Does this mean my system drive has been wiped and i have to except all data loss and do a clean install of Xp? My problem started a little while ago,look at post below named " cannot boot " Anyone got some advice? just incase i havent lost all my data,before i do a clean format and install. Kind Regards GR-13

Don't do anything drastic GR-13. I had your original problem and am now up and running with no real data loss. Be patient! For me it was a messed up registry. Here's how I started to fix things. You have to tell the machine to use an unmessed up registry. Put in your xp disk [if you don't have one I know how to work through that as I didn't have one] Choose repair by typing r You'll be asked which windows you want to repair. Probably says 1 c:\windows Choose 1 It will want an administrative password, I just pressed enter which put me to a c:\windows prompt. Now you're ready to tell your machine to use its original registry. So start typing all on one line: copy c:\windows\repair\system c:\windows\system32\config\system press enter then y to overwrite type again copy c:\windows\repair\software c:\windows\system32\config\software press enter then y to overwrite type again copy c:\windows\repair\sam c:\windows\system32\config\sam press enter then y to overwrite type again copy c:\windows\repair\security c:\windows\system32\config\security press enter then y to overwrite type again copy c:\windows\repair\default c:\windows\system32\config\default press enter then y to overwrite Take out the xp disk and reboot. You should be able to get into the machine now if the registry was indeed the problem. It's scarey to do this but as I said, I'm all okay now. Continue on that microsoft link paper now or get back to me and I'll tell you what I did next! Just e-mail me if you think I can help or post, either way! Nancy

Thanks Nancy That worked just fine, however it was the begining of my problems, everytime i played GTA Vice city,it crashed,upon re-boot it had missing registry files,happens everytime when vice city crashes!! so i`ve decided to bin the game. Thanks for your help to get over the first hurdle! Kind Regards GR

I have the same problem. I'm on 2.0ghz 512MB ddr ram hp pavilion ze5170. i have frequently gotten bluescreen type errors that are like stack memory errors from i guess there being no memory left cause i'm doing to much at once. Well normally i just have to hardboot it and everything is fine. Well this time it wouldn't boot up. It just keeps restarting no matter which selection i choose. ------- Safe Mode Safe Mode with Networking Safe Mode with Command Prompt Last Known Good COnfiguration (your most recent settings that worked) Start Windows Normally ------- I searched yahoo and got some other pages on the issue. Among them the suggestions that have fixed other peopels problem of this exact same thign is going into recovery as one of the helper guys that replied did when he had the problem, did fixboot, fixmbr, then chkdsk r. I did that, chkdsk took a long time but when it finished it said it corrected some errors tho when rebooted it just looped again rebooting itself. I tried your method and didn't work either. Though of the things you said to copy this one i wasn't able to do ,said the file didn't exist. ------- copy cwindowsrepairsystem cwindowssystem32configsystem press enter then y to overwrite ------- I checked the dir and there isn't even a system folder under repair so i don't know if that 1 folder not copying is the reason why it didn't work for me or what, but i have very important data that i can't lose due to having to format. I wasn't even able to do it as u had said initally either because for some reason my admin password wasn't working. So i had to do a partial windows install on another drive so it would show up in the recovery menu and i could select that as the #1, then i was able to switch to drive see and try your method tho i wasn't able to copy the first set you said to copy. Do you think that folder is wats stopping me from being able to be successfull with your method cause i have no clue but i hope so cause then thats at least another chance that i can get that folder somewhere else and copy it to the destination. All the others copied and overwrited fine except the first one, system folder. Thx:) look forward to your reply.