No boot, missing file !

[firthy]

I was installing a new modem in a friends computer today after his old one got fried during a lightning storm.

Computer was working fine, but in the middle of installing the new modem the computer wouldn't shut down when I had to reboot it. The hard drive was continually active and the computer was stuck on the Windows is closing down page (Win XP) for about 5 minutes so in the end I had to hold the button in to switch it off.

When I switched the computer back on it tried to load Windows but came up in the DOS screen with the message Windows\System\Config\???? file is missing, run setup on Win XP CD and press R for repair.

Or something like that anyway. I can't explain the reason for this happening but last week I repaired another friends computer that had exactly the same error and the only way that I could fix it was to reinstall Win XP over the top again.

Is this caused by a virus, it's one hell of a coincidence to get two computers with exactly the same error within a week.

Is there any way that I can fix this without a complete reinstall.

Regards,

Firthy

[Smokey]

Im not sure what causes it, but you can try booting from the XP cd, when you come to install, hit R for repair. Follow on sceen instructions until you get to c:\windows then type fixboot, this may fix your problem.

[mrsabidji]

Well, it could also be a Mobo/IDE bug. Try rebooting several times, or even shut the PSU down, wait for 30 sec or so, then re-start it. It happened to me many times with my former VIA KT333 chipset. Win XP seemed to randomly fail to locate some files during the boot sequence, then for some reason everything would go back to normal.

mrsabidji