Blue screen of death, boot problems, black screen startup

Hello.

Just today, I turned on my computer and got the blue screen of death, so I restarted my PC. Then a black screen came up saying "Windows could not start beacuse the following file is missing or corrupt : \windows\system32\config\system."

You can attempt to repair this file by putting the winxp cd in etc...

Now when i turn on my computer there is just a black screen showing, with nothing at all on it.

Any ideas anyone?

Thanks very much for your help.

 

It's a nasty error that requires some persistance and resourcefullness to overcome without a clean install.

If you have a Windows CD or have the recovery console installed, you might want to have a go at these directions.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;307545

Forum example of a successful recovery here:

http://forums.techguy.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=195985

 

Darn.. It seems to be quite long. However, I do have the windows xp CD, so it should be ok. I think I'll do my best with the steps tommorow. Do you know what causes the error in the first place? Thanks again.

 

Not really -- but I would speculate that the most vulnerable time is during shutdown, when Windows saves cached data to the registry. A crash then is more likely than others to cause file system and registry errors.

You may have yet more serious problems because you really should get more than a black screen with this error.

Watch for any signs of drive activity during restart, you should see at least the BIOS part of the bootup. If not -- there is an underlying hardware problem. Damaged ram might be an issue.