PC Repairs (network issues and startup problems). RAID help required.

funkyCable · 20-11-2011, 17:43

Hi.
I went to friends house today and they were having issues with connecting to the internet. The PC is hard wired to a wifi router. A iphone and other devices can connect wireless to the router and the internet without any issues. I plugged in my Netbook using the same cable and port as the pc and it worked. So this got me thinking is the PC. There was a orange link on the LAN CARD but not green light. So I openned "System Restore" and the screen was completely blank, so I started thinking it was virus or something.

I shoved my Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 into the machine and booted it. It connected to internet while i was booted in the Kaspersky Rescue. So this confirmed this was a windows issue. I ran the scan and nothing was picked up. I rebooted to windows but not I get a "Missing or corrupt" windows\system32\config".

Any ideas how I fix this error? I botted up using a win xp cd into the repair console and in the c: i type dir and it didn't list any windows folders but does have some files/folders

The HDD is setup in RAID and has another second HDD. The machine is a Dell Dimension 9150. At worse I would like to try and move their saved documents to another device and just do a complete clean installation.

**Kymmy** · 20-11-2011, 18:41

To correct system errors do a repair install.. Boot with the XP cd, go past the first repair and let it find the current install and then it should offer you another repair option (if it doesn;t then it means that the XP install/CD are two different versions) If you choose that one it'll reinstall all of windows but will keep the old docs/programs/settings.. Only thin you'll need to do afterwards is possibly a driver and all the updates.

funkyCable · 20-11-2011, 19:27

I'll post pictures of the machine. The parts are caked in 6+ years of dust.

**Kymmy** · 20-11-2011, 19:34

Nothing a vacuum cleaner and a soft brush probably couldn't cure

funkyCable · 20-11-2011, 19:44

Yes I'll post a before/After pictures tomorrow.

DaiNasty · 20-11-2011, 19:58

Does your friend have any recent backups?

Kymmy's suggestion of a repair install is good but there is a *small* element of risk. I always do a disk image before a repair these days after a couple of difficult repair jobs.

At least back up the My Docs trees.

funkyCable · 20-11-2011, 20:12

No unfortuately not. I'm managed to boot up into repair console and it foudn the windows dir. I had to change the bios setting from automatic ahci to automatic SATA>

---------- Post added at 20:12 ---------- Previous post was at 20:11 ----------

Does it matter what fflavour of xp i use to recover the missing/corrupt system 32 config?

**Kymmy** · 20-11-2011, 21:07

You could always put in another HDD (internal or external) and boot with puppy linux.. Copy off everything you want then continue with trying to repir the original drives..

DaiNasty · 20-11-2011, 22:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kymmy

You could always put in another HDD (internal or external) and boot with puppy linux.. Copy off everything you want then continue with trying to repir the original drives..

+1

or BartPE.

funkyCable · 21-11-2011, 12:00

Well what do you know there is another HDD sitting in the box. Well I've managed to boot to XP and gave it a good clean.

qasdfdsaq · 21-11-2011, 21:26

Well obviously, that's how RAID works.

I would chkdsk the drive. The most common causes for that missing registry problem are physically faulty hard drive or broken filesystem.