MiniNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM File Missing/Corrupt

[Skipbrac]

I had a fatal error (thank you BitDefender, not) sometime ago and gave up trying to recover from whatever happened. Thought it was time to try again. Ran rescue and recover from two sources - CD's and portable HD. Thanks to excellent inputs from this forum I got past the HAL.DLL problem. I get the subject message now tryingto start up. I have looked at the installed drive (starting up temporarily with Ubuntu), the R&R generated CD's and HD and don't find the "missing" file in the directory in any. What do I do next?

Blue ThinkVantage button doesn't bring up R&R selection anymore either. I can reinstall XP Pro but I was hoping I could do something to restore programs, files, and ThinkPad utility programs.

Many thanks in advance.

[ozzymud]

Wierd, posted on this earlier... post seems to be missing...

this error is from 1 or more of 3 things... missing/corrupt files: ntldr or ntdetect.com or boot.ini

You can try booting from the XP CD, then go into recovery consile and run "fixboot c:"

see this article: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

[Skipbrac]

I am (was) running XP Pro SP3.

My boot.ini is a lot different from yours:

[boot loader]
timeout=0
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional"/FASTDETECT
C:\="PC-DOS"

This is the boot.ini I find going back in time with R&R backups.

With respect to NTLDR and NDETECT.COM, which location should I should I copy files to, MiniNT or c:/windows? I copied them from another XP installation.

Thanks.

[ozzymud]

C:\>dir /a:h nt*.*
Volume in drive C is 250GB
Volume Serial Number is 0867-5309

Directory of C:\

08/04/2004 05:00 AM 47,564 NTDETECT.COM
08/04/2004 05:00 AM 250,032 ntldr
2 File(s) 297,596 bytes
0 Dir(s) 125,366,966,272 bytes free

C:\> <--- just in the root of the drive (Sizes are from XP Pro SP2, dunno if they changed)