I'm trying to repair my cousin's 'puter. Xp won't boot because \windows\system32\config\system file is missing or corrupt. I used the rescue disk that came with 'puter to reinstall Xp. Once it started I would try to click on something and the 'puter would reboot. After the third time The same message came up saying the file was missing or corrupted. I used an XP boot disk to get to the A: prompt. I tried to get to the C: prompt and it said invalid drive. I tried all of the letters in the alphabet and nothing worked. The rescue cd won't even work now. I went into the bios and it is recognizing the hard drive in there. I tried to change some of the settings in the bios, but nothing worked so I undid the changes. Any help would be appreciated.

You most likely have a NTFS partition. You can not access a NTFS partition from DOS without some 3rd party software such as NTFSDOS. The software sells for about $40.

Delete Partition Re-Format And then Re-install Windows. And this time when you reinstall, please just use the FAT32 File system. Your cousin's puter isn't a server or someting! Ciao

To: Response #1. Before I used the rescue cd I was able to access the C: drive with the XP boot disk. But after using the rescue disk to reinstall XP the XP boot disk fails to recognize it. And because of that the rescue cd can't reinstall XP on the C: drive. TO: Response #2. I can't delete the partition and format. Apparently the second partition contains the only copy of XP. The rescue cd copies XP from the 2nd partition to the 1st partition. She did not recieve a hard copy of XP when she purchased the system from Compaq.