xp won't start

[Mike Harris]

My system crashed and won't startup giving me the message
that the file: c:\windows\system32\config\system file is
missing or corrupt. It suggests to attempt to repair the
file using the recovery console but there is no
explanation of how to do it when I get there. I have 2
hard drives and can re-install xp on the primary one, but
first I want to copy my files over to the backup drive.
Unfortunately, the copy command in xp recovery mode
doesn't support wildcards so I don't know how to go about
copying hundreds of individual files over to the backup
drive before re-installing.

My question is: Is there a way to expand, extract, copy,
repair or whatever, the corrupt system file from the xp
disk without re-installing xp (which requires a re-
format), and if not, how can I copy the contents of the
existing drive to my backup drive, without doing it 1 file
at a time?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Rich Barry]

Mike, try here.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];Q307545


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];Q314058

or do a Repair Install.
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm which maybe the easiest.
"Mike Harris" > wrote in message
...
> My system crashed and won't startup giving me the message
> that the file: c:\windows\system32\config\system file is
> missing or corrupt. It suggests to attempt to repair the
> file using the recovery console but there is no
> explanation of how to do it when I get there. I have 2
> hard drives and can re-install xp on the primary one, but
> first I want to copy my files over to the backup drive.
> Unfortunately, the copy command in xp recovery mode
> doesn't support wildcards so I don't know how to go about
> copying hundreds of individual files over to the backup
> drive before re-installing.
>
> My question is: Is there a way to expand, extract, copy,
> repair or whatever, the corrupt system file from the xp
> disk without re-installing xp (which requires a re-
> format), and if not, how can I copy the contents of the
> existing drive to my backup drive, without doing it 1 file
> at a time?
>
> Any help would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks