I've read several posts with a similar problem. Windows can't start because missing or corrupt config\system file... I've tried several things and nothing has worked yet: safe mode, last good config startup, etc. Tried booting from Win XP CD and it starts going but then goes to the "blue screen of death" before getting to the recovery option. Please help! Thanks so much! Last night my virus program popped while on the internet, could that be causing this? I thought it cleaned things up, maybe not.. Thanks!! Alex

boot up your computer and press F8 until you hit the boot options, choose safe mode with command prompt only, once you get into that you can type: scanreg /restore and if that doesnt work then you can try chkdsk /restore good luck

scanreg /restore ? Fine for Win98/ME, but not so much for WinXP There is no "chkdsk /restore", period - it's a disk scanning utility .... anyways - IF you cannot boot from the CD, that's not a Windows problem - either bad hardware or a bad CD (in addition to your other issue) I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.

try : pull out your computer memory and clean it,then push it in the motherboard again.

Thanks for your suggestions. The safe mode w/prompt doesn't work - it gives me the error before a prompt appears. I tried pulling out the memory (there were actually 2-256 sticks). I tried booting with only one of them in, and tried each one, to see if perhaps one was faulty. But that didn't work either. Got the same error, and couldn't boot off CD either. My warrantee couldn't have expired more than a couple months ago :( ugh. Any other ideas please?? Thanks

"Any other ideas please??" Like what? (other than imaginary commands from other OSes - heh) It seems you have more than one problem - if you cannot boot from an alternate source, such as a CD, than that's pretty much the show-stopper, and is likely a hardware problem - that must be addressed before any progress can be made. You will have to troubleshoot, and trying another CD (or CD drive) would be the simplest place to start. Bart's PE is an excellent tool to have, and may allow you to perform the M$ fix for your Windows file corruption issue. If that doesn't work, then you may have memory or motherboard issues, but there are any number of possibilities I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.

Make certain that CDROM is selected as the first boot device in the boot order in your system CMOS. If you don't hear the CDROM spin up at all at boot, this could be your problem with booting from the CD.