Greetings list--

I am about to attempt to repair a Windows XP Home installation
on a HP Pavilion laptop. As is so often the case, HP provides a
recovery disk, but not a Windows disk. (At this point I should
mention that my client has several Pavilions of different ages and
is not at all certain he can locate the correct restore disk for this
laptop.) The message on boot reads that a system file is either
corrupt or missing. The file is C:\Windows\System32\Config\System.

If my client is unable to locate the correct restore CD for his
system, is it possible for me to use my Windows XP Pro CD to
do a "repair setup", or will the conflicting version, activation and
other similar gremlins prevent a fix in that manner?

Failing this procedure, is it possible to use the boot floppies I've
created in order to 'get to the directory structure' and perhaps copy
the system file from a different XP Home computer to the appropriate
location on the laptop, or is the "system" file too much of a "fingerprint"
of the computer on which it resides?

Thanks for any help you fine folk can provide.

Paul A. Shippert
Utilitarian
Margaret Brent Middle School
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