My father has a P3 running Windows XP. He uninstalled Norton GoBack, and the hard drive is now unrecognizeable. When we try to start the computer with the hard drive, we get the following message: "Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM"

I have tried using various freeware tools (UltimateBootCD and Knoppix) to try and fix the registry values, but the hard drive is intermittent with it's recognition on the BIOS. Sometimes the BIOS sees it, and sometimes it doesn't. Even when it does see it, it will state that the drive has failed in the boot process after recognition.

We have tried using various MBR, BOOT, Partition and Windows tools to try to access and fix the drive, but nothing is working. It appears that we may have to completely reformat and repartition the hard drive in order for it to work, but I am hoping that someone may know of a way to get the BIOS to recognize the drive long enough to use a utility, or know of a tried and true utility that will work.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

One utility that has saved my backside on more than one occasion-- is BootIt NG. It is a full-featured partition manager. Learned about it through the LangaList Newsletter (Now Windows Secrets)
It works outside the OS-- and fits on a floppy disc-- which I assume a P3 computer would have.
I am not 100% sure it would work-- but there is a whole community of experienced users for just this program


With this kind of issue-- what's to lose ?

Boot Manager, Partition Manager, and Drive Image Utility - BootIt Next Generation