XP Will Not Boot After System Restore

8 yr old Dell Dimension Desktop running XP Home was not letting me make a new folder so I ran system restore to a point in time I last remembered making a new folder a couple of weeks ago. That resulted in a black screen saying that Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM
You can try to repair this by Starting Winows Setup using the original CD ROM select R at the first screen. After attempting this and getting a BSOD with an error message I tried it again and got to the setup screen and I realized that pressing R brings me to the recovery console and I had no idea what to do next such as what command to try. I also tried going into safe mode to no avail as well as the option of trying the last settings that worked option.Can anybody help? I was able to post this using the same machine booted into a Live CD of Damn Small Linux so attempting fixes and getting back to post my progress will not be easy.

1. Insert the Windows XP startup disk into the floppy disk drive, or insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.

Click to select any options that are required to start the computer from the CD-ROM drive if you are prompted.

2. When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.

3. If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you must access from the]Recovery Console.

4. When you are prompted, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.

5. At the command prompt, type chkdsk /f , and then press ENTER.

6. To exit the Recovery Console and restart the computer, type exit at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.

Thanks for helping me out. My original post was 1AM on the east coast and then I went to sleep so sorry for the delay. After 2 attempts to boot from the CD resulting in: A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
SESSION 3_INITIALIZATION_FAILED
If this is the first time this stop error screen...
***STOP: 0x0000006F (0x0000020, 0x00000000,0x00000000, 0x00000000)
The 3rd attempt reached the welcome screen and in the recovery console chkdsk/f was not recognized. Typed help for list of commands and typed CHKDSK and got volume appears to be in good condition and was not checked, use /p to check the volume anyway. Typed chkdsk/p and got CHKDSK found one or more errors on the volume followed by total disk space, available space, allocation unit size, total allocation units, etc. Now what?

chkdsk /p is a very thorough diagnostic scan but makes no repairs, try running chkdsk /p /r. If this doesn't work it's time to do a repair installation.

It looks like chkdsk /p /r has finished, it says it has finished checking the volume but doesn't mention anything about any errors. Then it gives the exact same information about total and available disk space it gave before. I don't know if this is good or bad. What should I do next?

This may apply here, Recover From Corrupted Registry, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

Louis

I began to follow the procedure in the MS article referenced by hamluis and it did get XP to start and used that opportunity to copy everything important onto the 2nd HD in that PC. Good thing I did that because towards the end of the procedure I got a black screen with a new error message. It looks like the fix involved recreating about 4 registry files and I think one of them for some reason did not copy. My next thought was to go back into the recovery console and redo the process with the the one file but this time it wouldn't let me in without an administrators password and I never created one. At this point, since I saved the data that was important to me, I just went ahead and reinstalled XP and reformatted the drive, a major inconvenience in itself but at least I know how to do it. I know its been a while but I just wanted to report the outcome. Thanks.

I am sorry you had to go to that extreme to fix your problem but I am happy you were able to save your important stuff first and that you now have a working system

I just followed this process as i'm fixing my friends/kids computer that had the same message at startup....

I'm not a wizbang comp pro, but was able to follow this process to a T and it worked!!! Until they bring it back to me again for fix'n.... LOL

The wierd thing was that after i renamed the restore files (3/2/09) and exited rc to reboot, windows wanted me to activate again, so i did via internet and it activated successfully! Also, part 4 wants you to do a system restore when your back up and running, but when trying that it told me "Your computer cannot be restored to: 3/2/09 System Checkpoint - No changes have been made to your computer"
I asume this is because i used the restore files from this same date... Anyway it works fine now.

Again this site is great! Thanks for posting AW9018, and thanks for both processes from dc3 and hamluis.

I'm glad my problem brought this particular fix to light. I'm also glad to see someone had complete success with it, unlike me. I must have failed to execute some step in the process somewhere towards the end. I am fortunate to have saved my data though.