Blue Screen of Death C:windowssystem32configsystem missing or corrupt.
Windows Blue Screen of Death
If you have turned your PC on and received this message the problem can be solved with the following steps. However, before beginning, it is very important to note that the cause of the problem may be the hard drive itself. As with any type of do it yourself recovery this could cause permanent unrecoverable damage to the hard drive and or the data that exist on the hard drive. Like most hard drive recovery processes, physical disk repair isn’t necessary if the hard drive is seen by the BIOS. If your hard drive is recognized by the BIOS, but you get the blue screen of death these steps will help you restore Windows. Be careful and backup if you can! That said, lets continue.
If you have your hard drive manufacturers diagnostic tools, please read the documentation carefully and test the drive to make sure it is functioning properly. If you do not have the manufacturers diagnostic tools you can go to their respective websites to download them. It is important to read the documentation as these tools may perform data destructive tests and procedures to your hard drive. It is also a good idea to try and recover some of the data by making your boot drive a slave drive under another Windows system for hard drive recovery. Please see our previous post “How to slave a hard drive“. Ok, lets proceed with the restoration and hard drive recovery.
Windows Command Prompt
Time for the XP Recovery Console.
You are going to need to get your XP Installation Disk.
You will also need to make sure you can boot from your XP installation Disk. Insert you installation disk in your cd/dvd drive and make sure you see the option press any key to boot from cd: If so, do so and you’re good to go. If you do not see that option you will need to enter your system setup (BIOS) and change the boot order. When your computer boots you should see press delete, F10 or some key function to enter your systems setup. You will usually find the boot order under advanced settings once you are in the setup console. Simply select boot order and choose CD as your first boot device. You may change the boot order back to the original settings after this exercise in hard drive recovery.
When you boot to your Install CD it will take a minute to load all the drivers, then it will provide two options-Setup or Recovery Console; “press r” for the recovery console. It will than ask you which Windows install you want to repair, most users will only have one so just input 1 and press enter. You should now have entered the recovery console of your Windows XP CD.
What you are about to do is basically a minor System Restore via the Recovery Console. We are going to use an older version of the currently curr The text in red will be what you should type and the black text will what the system outputs. READY, SET, GO.
C:Windows>CD C:system~1_resto~1
C:system~1_resto~1>dir
After you enter the DIR command and hit enter you will get a list of folders like rp1, rp2, rp3, rp4, etc.. The “rp” part of the folder name indicates it’s a Restore Point.
What we want to do is use the 2nd or 3rdhighest numbered folder in that list. For example, if it listed rp1 through rp53 you’ll want the rp52 folder. We will use rp52 to outline the rest of the procedure.
Now, we will use the following commands..
C:system~1_resto~1>cd rp52
C:system~1_resto~1rp52>cd snapshot
C:system~1_resto~1rp52snapshot>copy _registry_machine_system c:windowssystem32configsystem
Overwrite system [y,n]: y
1 file copied
C:system~1_resto~1rp23snapshot>exit
Remove the installation disk .
Those are the steps to restore Windows after getting The Blue Screen Of Death. If you need help give us a call at 866-438-6932 or visit hard drive recovery.
I have a blue screen of death right now, only it flashes by so quickly I cannot read it. how do I ‘pause’ the boot process so I can read the text on the blue screen?
hi, i am sorry for i can’t write english, i want change disc of hdd, can you send to me link how is to be and what i need . thank you .
sorry false part
Greetings…
I just recently experienced a BSOD with a stop code: 0x0000007B on a Dell Dimension 2400 machine running XP SP2 Home. When I ran across your fix procedure here I fired it back up and attempted it. The response to the very first command> C:Windows CD C:System~1_Restor~1; provoked this repsonse on enter: Access is denied.
I suspect that there may not be a way to get around this “access denied” issue on XP Home, but perhaps you could suggest what I might now try to do.
Thank you for any camaraderie on this.
Mike
Michael,
I would agree that the problem lies in the fact that you are in Windows Home Edition, it doesnt have permissions in the classic sense like XP Professional. I have 2 suggestions:
1. You could try taking this drive out of the laptop and slaving it in to a desktop with XP PRO on it and then try the steps in this walkthru. I would think that the permissions from the XP Professional load would over take the permission on the salve drive since those would not be loaded. You could then log into the recovery console as the admin of that machine and do what is needed.
2. The assumption I am making is that you have the Windows XP Home Cd? If this is the case you could theoretically try re installing windows over the top of itself. I am not a fan of this method because something could go very go awry. So I would try the first method if at all possible.
If you have your Windows CD boot to the CD. Then after choosing “R” for Recovery Console. You should be asked which install you would like to logon and the default is always 1. Then a password prompt it is blank by default. Assuming this is a Windows CD you should have access to the drive.
I have a question about the blue screen of death…
Mine is not quite the same screen as the one displayed above.
It tells me first to disable any anti virus programs and run a chkdsk /F on the drive. I did run the scandisk and everything checked out fine. This is what the tech info looked like:
*** STOP: 0x00000024 (0x001902FA, 0xF96DF814, 0xF96DF514, 0xF8E84BBA)
*** ntfs.sys – Address F8E84BBA base at F8E78000, DateStamp 3d6e5c1
When I tried to run the recovery console, as soon as I type in “r” to start the process the screen reappears again. Every type of way to boot up leads to the same screen… any ideas?? At least if I can’t ever boot up, are there ways to get info from the disk still?
Thanks
David
Ouch, ‘NTFS.sys’ indicates an annoying problem, but ONLY if it’s the only name that you see. I’ve seen this on a 160GB partition that I fixed. It indicates that the part of NTFS.dll that interprets the file system structures has come across malformed data. This is definitely a bug in NTFS but there’s a way to get around it. In english, your drive has corruption that crashes your OS.
Did you recently install video drivers? Anything at all? I’ve heard of a bad install causing Windows to crash in semirandom DLL/SYS/EXE/etc. modules. Random but among a very small list (all of them loaded by kernel). If you only see NTFS.SYS then this might not be the problem. Did you add any new hardware? Is the power supply up to the job? Is the cable going to the drive loose/bad?
Here’s some info on fixing it if it’s the NTFS bug. Please tell us if it works. If it doesn’t then you may need recovery services.
I had the recovery console BSOD and had to use a trick like those to get around it. If you have a drive that works, it would be a good idea to just make an image using the program on this site. That way you can go back if you mess it up even worse with CHKDSK.
BTW If you have backups, you can just zero the drive out and start over. I’d still use a S.M.A.R.T. reading utility to see if the drive is likely to fail. I think this site has one.
Someone else had a problem like this that seems to be at least partially hardware related:
Link
That implies that you should try putting the drive in another board with different power supply and all, when trying to run the recovery console. It still may not work, but at least you’ll eliminate the hardware from immediate suspicion.
Here’s some stuff to run next time you build/rebuild a system.
1) Run the bootable memory checking CDs like Memtest86+.
2) Make sure that all cables and connectors look good. When I lived in the country I found a cable that a mouse had nibbled on! Someone left a small hole in the back and it got in. I’ve seen cables break when taken off of drives or sitting next to fans, etc. I’ve seen pins on the drives get bent or even pushed in. A little visual inspection can’t hurt and only takes a few minutes while wondering what the problem is could take days!
3) Check that the system doesn’t get too hot. Cleaning fans and vents often solves thermal problems on older machines. Most BIOS setup screens have a “System health” menu or the like. If not, just check using a program like Everest in Windows.
4) If Windows doesn’t want to install even to a new drive, try a boot CD like Kubuntu. If it fails to boot then at least you know that it’s not your Windows CD! Added bonus is that the memory testing program is on that CD so you only need to burn one. 🙂
5) Enable S.M.A.R.T. warnings in your BIOS setup screen if available. If your BIOS doesn’t have an option to warn you when booting with a bad drive in the system, then get a Windows program that does the same.
6) Backup, backup, backup! LOL I imagine that DTI will repeat that sentiment if you don’t.
Typo: I kept thinking NTFS.DLL not NTFS.SYS. Oops
I did not install anything new on it for some time. There might have been some spyware and stuff on there that I couldnt fix but thats about it as far as I know….
Thanks Joseph, As soon as I get back in town to my handicapped PC, I’ll let you know if anything works for it…
I tried some programs to download to disc to start up the drive or fix it, but its still not working… I should have mentioned before that it is a laptop and that certainly limits the amount of options that can be done to it, but people still have told me that certain programs have revived the disc… I’ve heard Hitachi’s startup disk is supposed to be the best but I’m curious what you guys have heard about it.
Thanks for reading guys, let me know if you have any thoughts…
my computer restart every time when ready to log into Window XP it repeats all over again and suddenly after some minutes it got blue screen. I try to reformat it using CD installer but it still got blue screen.The blue screen appears when installation finish copying files and says windows will restarts and examining disk thats when the blue screen appear even I try to reformat the disk.
At the bootup set up I can see it detecting the disk but I run the first part of the installations its was fine but cant continue during examine disk.
this is the problem i had for my computer or hard disc
I remove the hard disc and slave it to other computer in the slave master but it restart the computer again repeatedly like my old computer.
I slave to recover my files but the same problem happen. it cannot be slave .
pls advice me how to solve my computer
thanks
John, I would guess that the drive has a serious physical problem to cause multi machines to reboot. There is a trick.. you can try getting a USB hard drive chassis and waiting for windows to boot then plug the drive in and see if you can read it that way. If you can not I would say this is a situation that needs a clean room and a hard drive technician.
Hi Jacqui,
Very impressive website! I have two problems I was hoping you could help me with?
Firstly, a Packard Bell which is saying that it has an ‘Unmountable Boot Volume’. at start up; you are offered the chance to start in safe mode/safe mode with command prompt, last known good configuration etc., but even when selected the ‘Unmountable’ problem shows up. Additionally, it also has the letters/numbers ‘STOP 0X6 ED (0x8A5979E0) along with a whole lot more zeros. I’ve tried the usual Bios tricks – because it suggests knocking off ‘shadowing’ and ‘caching’ but I can’t find them! We don’t have the original installation disks so we’re at a loss.
Secondly, a Packard Bell which when it’s booting offers the Safe Mode options, along with start Windows normally. When it boots up in normal mode, it goes slow. In the icon section at the bottom right of the screen, an IDE device driver is installing and this, I think, is the problem. It doesn’t finish installing though.
Any suggestions to these problems would be greatly appreciated.