Hi, I tried what you suggested Michael and I got into my Xp Pro and it is working well with a few small problems, problems which I think are my fault. According to the MS article I followed every step in Part One and then booted straight into XP Pro. I know, I should have first pressed F8 and into Safe mode but i didn't! And so as a result, i think, all I have for restore points is the only one it created after I fixed the system file and booted straight into XP Pro. Even from Xp Home I couldn't find any more restore points but the one created after the fix. So that leaves me with no previous registry entries to restore from. As a result, Disk Defrag won't work and my AVG Free edition is missing the Resident shield engine. AVG I fixed but defrag I can't seem to fix. And there may be other problems I don't yet see.
My question is, is it possible to use one of the system.bak files in the Windows/System32/config folder and rename it just system and copy it over the existing system file(the one I copied from the repair folder)? Would this solve anything or be OK?
I should tell you that in doing Part One of the MS article, I only did it to the system file, not the sam, security, software and default files. Have I messed up here?
Sorry but can you offer any help?
Thanks,
Ben