Hi Paul,

Unfortunately, this is pretty serious. That file is not just an OS driver
file, it is the registry hive file for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM, and
copying it from another machine will be completely wrong, since it stores
settings specific for your computer. Unless you have a registry backup, you
may be looking at a complete OS re-install.

You can try a repair option, but you may very well need the specific CD for
that computer, and even then, it may not help because the settings in the
registry have most likely been modified specific to the computer, at this
point, it can't hurt to try though.

Russ Poffenberger
[log in to unmask]

At 04:52 PM 1/4/2005, you wrote:
>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.

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