I am trying to acces the recovery console, but it does not ask me to choose which windows installation I want to recover (I have only installed win xp) nor it asks me for the administrator password. It just starts and shows me the C prompt. When I want to change or copy a file it tells me acces denied. Anybody can help with this? Thanks in advance

boot past that first repair screen to where the c: drive is listed. do a repair there. it will replace all sytstem files without data loss

I have tried replacing the files but all I get is an "access denied" message

You need to use this fix to be able to access any file or folder in XP R.C. Access any drives or folders under Recovery Console 1. Copy the following bolded lines in Notepad and save it as recovery.reg file name. REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Setup\RecoveryConsole] "SetCommand"=dword:00000001 "SecurityLevel"=dword:00000001 2. Double click recovery.reg file and click Yes option in the "Are you sure … " dialog box. 3. Create a text file with the below bolded content and save it as allowset.txt to a floppy diskette. set AllowWildCards = TRUE set AllowAllPaths = TRUE set AllowRemovableMedia = TRUE set NoCopyPrompt = TRUE Note It must be a blank before and after = 4. Boot from CD-ROM with windows XP CD and go to Recovery Console. 5. Insert the diskette. Type the following command and press Enter. batch a:\allowset.txt This makes easier than manually typing the four set commands. From now on, you can access any drives and folders.

FJB, Thanks for the reply. I was able to view my hard drive using NTFSDOS Pro. I have replaced the c:\windows\system32\config\system file which seemed to corrupt and did not let me boot into windows. Allthough, I have replaced the file I get the same message. Any thoughts?