I’ll begin by apologizing the length of this message but I feared leaving any of the detail out would only result in suggestions I’ve already tried.
I was asked to take a look at a relatively new IBM computer that will no longer boot. The machine is licensed for Vista but I’ve determined it’s running Windows XP Professional. There is XP COA showing a product key.
The error message is the somewhat familar message stating that “Windows can’t start because of a missing or corrupt WINDOWSSYSTEM32CONFIGSYSTEM.”
To this point I’ve done the following:
– Pulled the drive and attached it to a working PC with an external docking station giving me the abilty to easily work with files on the unbootable hard drive.
– Backed up the files from the …Windowssystem32config folder.
– Copied the following files from the …Windowsrepair folder into the …Windowssystem32config folder: software, sam, security, default.
– Determined that the “system” file (presumably corrupt) does exist in the config folder but is missing in the repair folder. Only a “system.bak” file exists in the repair folder.
– Learned that copying the system.bak file into the config folder changed nothing unless renamed to “system” after removing the the corrupted “system” file in that folder.
– When I rebooted using the renamed system.bak file I encountered the Lsass.exe error stating that “When trying to update a password the return status indicates that the value provided as the current password is not correct.”
– After attempting the above and failing, I used an Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UBCD4Win) with the intent of assessing System Restore on the non-booting drive. UBCD4Win found no restore restore points – not the first one.
Do I have any additional repair options remaining or is does this look like a Windows XP reinstall at this point? TIA for your thoughts.
