A friend's pc with win xp (pro) had random freezing problems and trouble shooting showed  a power supply failure. replaced with a new power supply and now win will not load.

(1) at the first attempt it loaded upto the win xplogo and froze halfway through

(2) gave up after 5/6 attempts and let the system cool down.

(3)after a couple of hours tried again and got a window with options
normal/last known config/with cmd prompt/safe mode etc.

(4)chose normal first--- did not work. neither did the other options. just froze every time.

(5)again cooling down and re-try. this time got a msg C:\WIN 32\CONFIG.SYS file missing or corrupted and to insert original setup cd and choose "r" option.

(6) problem was the owner did not have the original set up cd.

this is where it stands at the moment. my question is::--

(1) is it possible to boot from a diskette (and if so will I need all the 6 diskettes for win xp?) "the free pc tech support-boot disk downloads" says a single "boot disk essential" will do and from this directory I386/ run winnt.exe"

tried this after setting the bios to boot from floppy but it will not read the floppy.

(2) if I slave the win xp-- hdd to my system with win 98 se is it possible to repair the config.sys file.

(3) as of this time I have slaved it and do find a "repair" folder(in windows) but it does not contain any config. sys file.

two more points (1) the friends system does not have  CDROM drive but a CD-RW.

so even if the original win xp pro set up cd is available i do not think it will read off the cd-rw. if  I install a cdrom drive it shows as (gibberish)
in the bios IDE details and possibly will run into "new hardware" problem

(2) am able to get into bios every time-- possibly one good sign

come to think of it I am happy with 98se!

any input will be of immense help and will be gratefully appreciated.

good day--- Venkat

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