Basicly Last night my panda anti virus ran out of date and my pc was running slow, so I decided to give it a bit of a clean up reserached some good freeware virus scanners and firewalls for now till I could get a new one sorted.

I used a clean up tool called "Comodo system cleaner" and I also defragged using a program called "Auslogics Registry Defrag 5.1.18.445

Between them they managed to find lots of errors and defragged some space for me, so then it asks me to restart (I'm preety sure it automaticly backed up the registry for me"

Anyway so it restarts and I get the following message

Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

So I restarted it hoping it would go away, of course it did not, Now i cannot put in an original xp disc from this pc as it is an old hardrive as it is from an old pc of my dads that was given to him a while ago. I luckily had an even older hardrive of my brothers and have put that in my pc for now (10 gb lol) , this is how I'm using pc atm so does anybody have a clue if theres anything I can do

Hello Levi the first thing you should of done was repeatedly tap F8 on startup chose last known good config if that doesnt work with the origonal hard drive put back in you need the install disk.

Plus the fix is way complicated if the last known good config doesnt work.

Or reinstall windows.

Ok thanks for your reply, I will now give that ago (fingers crossed) And will report back, I'm basicly 100% sure I will not be able to find the original xp disc for that pc, will any xp disc repair or does it have to be unique?

You can use an OEM XP install disk that coinsides with the COA key on the computer.

XP Pro key to XP Pro disk.

XP Home key to XP HOME disk.

Now an OEM disk is a install disk that came supplied with a new computer.

You CANNOT use a retail disk that was bought with its own key.

My sugestion is try the last known good config otherwise it would be a reinstall due to the recovery fix is rather difficult.

Great!! Now I think i killed my motherboard, pc wont boot what so ever just a clicking noise every few seconds

Have now transferrd the old 10 gb hardrive to an even older pc just so I can use internet lol everythings slowly dying

Tapping f8 did not show last known start up or anyhting similar just wanted me to choose what device to boot with

so any help with the motherboard problem, sounds dead to me

ahh 1 problem has now turned into two

Hello levi1989 do you still require assistance?