Hello,

Give this a try, it's for XP but may apply in your case as well:

    How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP 
from starting
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

Later, Ray Parrish

jean mares wrote:
> On the next startup again, I wasn't able to log on to the desktop because it displayed this message:
> Windows was unable to start because the following file is missing or damaged:
> \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM
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