System32 files missing - will a repair install fix? (xp)

I think the topic title is pretty self explanatory - sorry I've no additional info as it's not my computer, the info is third hand, and the computer is miles away.
It's gonna cost 'em €120 quid for the guy in the town to do a reformat - which is a load of crap frankly.
I reckon a repair install should fix it right?

 

It's worth a try, particularly given the expense their otherwise facing.

 

Actually, about 50 percent of the time, you don't even need to do a "repair install".

Often this results from simple disk corruption and running chkdsk will fix the problem. It's not that the file is truly missing, it's that the OS kernel cannot find it.

it depends on what the system32....error says.

Is it missinf (for example) a hal.dll file or some other DLL? The file is usually still there. If it refers to a file without an extension like SYSTEM, or SOFTWARE, this can often be a registry hive corruption or missing file or again, windows just cannot find it.

Using another Windows disk, run the Windows recovery console and run
chkdsk /r

In fact, even if it fails the first time, run it a second or third time before going the windows repair installation route.

As noted, chkdsk /r will fix a huge number of these errors

 

Yeah, however like I said I've no idea what state the computer is in.
My friend texted me today asking "Whats a windows root system 32 file?"
His mum had rung him earlier after it wouldn't work for her - that's all the info I can divine

 

Other than curiousity, to me, it does not matter what the error ultimately says

Either way, half the time, chkdsk with a windows recovery console will likely save him 120 quid

The question is--does he have a windows disk...and if not, can he burn an ISO? I have a Recovery conole cd he can download (not a windows disk--recovery console only) that is about 6mb that will do the trick....just need to be at home to upload it somewhere he can get it.

Or, if he can pull the drive from the computer and put it as a slave in another machine he could run a chkdsk on it from there.

 

If you could upload I'd greatly appreciate it - I'd use the disk more than once!!!
I've 3 computers queued to be fixed, tweaked and de-virused

 

Again, this is only a standalone recovery console cd. It needs to be burned as an iso (not burned on a cd), and you still need to know the admin password if there is one.

You just boot to the CD, choose recovery console and then run chkdsk from the eventual prompt--gets one out of a lot of jams

I just checked and the file is already online, must not have deleted it from the server

http://www.thecomputerparamedic.com/files/rc.iso

 

Koo, thanks a mill man.
I'll burn it myself, keep it in my wallet of pc cd's ('lite' linux distros, gparted, xpsp2, sp3 installer etc)