could not recover XP system from an abnormal shutdown

Hi
XP installation on my computer is of Windows XP professional edition (with
SP2). System partition is on NTFS.

Few days back, UPS failed when system was shutting down. An abnormal
shutdown case. From then on, system booting fails with below message:
Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

To recover my system, I searched on NET and found this link.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545/en-us

I tried the procedure described in that link. But, I could not complete Part
One itself.

In part one:

1. Booted WinXp installation CD
2. Typed 'R' to get recovery console
3. I don't have dual-boot, I selected c:\windows as the installation to
access from the recovery console
4. Here, I was not asked to enter password for any user. It just gave me
recovery console command prompt.
5. I am able to create tmp directory under c:\windows using "md tmp" command

But, copying "system" file to "tmp" directory failed with the message:
"could not copy file"

Because of this problem I could not compelete the procedure described in the
link.

Why my recovery console is not asking password?
Why I am not able to copy the files into tmp directory, while I was able to
create the directory?

Please help me in recovering my system.

durgarao