Hi all, newbie here and I'll be grateful for any help/assistance given.

It all started whilst using my PC and I had a power cut at home, when the power was restored I switched my PC back on but just as it was booting up and the 'Windows XP' screen was displayed I had another power cut. I rebooted again when the power was on again but my PC was just stuck in the 'windows XP' screen again and wouldn't load.

To cut a long story short, I reloaded Windows from the Installation CD but chose not to format the drive. Now windows loads OK, albeit a lot slower, but I'm now not able to access the internet.

I checked Device Manager and it tells me that the drivers for Ethernet, Bus Controller, VGA and PCI are not loaded. I have the drivers and utilities disk but on running the wizard it tells me that the drivers do not exist??

The PC is a Dell C521 and I've noticed that there is a J:minint folder - not sure if this another boot drive, but in any case I have found out that minint\system32\config\system is missing or corrupt, and can't find a copy on any installation disks to repair/overwrite it.

I'm wondering whether the Hard disk has had it or if there's some other problem.

Thanks in advance, Rob

Sounds like the hard disk is okay. But due to the power cut, some key windows files that were in use may have got corrupted. If you have the Windows XP CD then try clicking:

Start > Run > type in sfc /scannow

Notice the space after sfc

You will need the XP CD in the CD drive.

Alternatively and probably the better solution is to format the PC and start fresh.

Thanks for that - trying it right now. Glad to hear you don't think the HD is U/S.

Next on my list was a system restore and if that was no god a clean install.

Cheers

Also, make sure your drivers are correct. If you go to the dell website and type in your model number they will give you all the drivers for your board.

You may want or need to do this on another PC and put the drivers on a CD or USB stick.

You need to find the XP CD to fix this issue.

JB.