I would really appreciate your help here guys, here's the situation: I recently bought a stick of 512MB PC2100 ram for my P4 1.7 GHz, to expand on my current 256Mb RAM. the problem is, that although I checked several times, once I had fitted the new RAM and booted up the PC it started producing a burning smell. I instantly turned the PC off and nearly burned my fingers on the new RAM which was damaged and also left burn marks in the memory slot. I had also taken the 256 MB ram out and then replaced it along with the new stick. After removing the 512Mb ram, I booted up my PC and am now unable to get into windows xp pro as I continually receive an error message: Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup Utility using the original Setup CD-ROM. Select 'r' at the first screen to start repair I have been unable to locate my installation cd and have scoured the web for solutions but none of these have worked so far - please help me find a way round this as there are a lot of files that I wish to retrieve but I cannot access the C:\ hard drive at all! Many thanks

If you do not have a CD to do a repair/install then you may want to try this exercise. Try this link and this link. A lot of typing but it will recover your registry for you.

thanks for your help, problem is I can't get past the error message so can't get into Windows. I have now found my cd but am getting various error messages during the start of the setup process - i can't access the recovery console