HELP! Corrupted Hard Drive! Whattaido?

Recently a section of my hard drive corrputed so that windows couldn't boot up. It was the Windows/System32/config folder. When I try to boot it, it directs me to insert the Windows installation cd and tells me to click r when the menu comes out. By pressing R I choose not to reinstall the OS but instead to try to repair the corrupted files. The problem, however, is that when I do pretty R it brings me to DOS and leaves me there. I'm assuming I'm supposed to somehow copy the correct files on the CD and replace the corrupted ones on the hard drive... I just have no idea how to find those files on the CD and how to copy them from the CD onto the hard drive.

I know this probably isn't the place to ask this question, so if any of you know any other place I could find the solution to my problem, please post!

 

k, insert the disk and pretend like you are going to format (eventhough you aren't). After you accept the license agreement, the next window should detect the previous version of XP and will ask whether you want to repair or reformat. You'll want to choose repair. This should do the XP repair and take about an hour to do. It won't erase any files.

 

I know this is an old post, but I'm hoping Amber you still have it flagged.

I have the same error described above. I followed your steps and after trying to detect th eprevious version of XP it gave me the following message:

"Drive C is unfomatted, damaged, orformatted with a file system that is incompatible with Windows XP. To continue installing Windows XP, Setup needs to format this drive."

I've tried some other fixes without success. Do you think the above message means my hard drive is no longer good and likely the cause of the problem?

I have a second hardrive and backed up pictures, etc. from it. But I'm not sure if I know how to restore from it to a new hard drive? Is my next step buying a new hard drive and reinstall Windows XP on it?

 

lawtyger - please review your original post. In the future, you should not start a new thread and then ask a very similar question in an existing thread. With two topics, you can often get contradictory information, or posters may waste their time typing when the question has already been answered in another thread.

 

Understood and duly noted. I guess my concern was while I did what forum members (regardless of the type of forum) want people to do - SEARCH before asking - the post I found was from March of 2006. After adding to that thread, I thought the people in thread may not even be members anymore. Anyway, no ill intent on my part and I will certainly abide by your wishes.