Windows system restore is certainly a life saver tool (one more reason why I love Microsoft products). I have done it a couple of times. Thanks cscgal for sharing it with us.

No prob Just watch out that it does a clean job. Sometimes it makes a few small booboos in the registry, especially if software has been installed/uninstalled since the restore date. It's reliable though, which is saying a lot coming out of my mouth.

If the Damage to Windows XP is severe...but you are able to boot into windows at any stage or by using an older restore point....then its worth trying a full repair by going to START....RUN and typing sfc /scannow

This will ask you for your original XP CD and will replace any altered KEY SYSTEM files back to the originals working ones...it will also restore windows to a pre-service pack state so you will have to re run the SP1 file.


Cheerio

:rolleyes: Good advice, however most boxes purchased these days have XP preinstalled and you do not get the CD.

Is there a work around?

Also, does XP automatically set random restore points, or is this a setting that needs to be configured?

I have never posted before, but I haven't found an answer.

I am running XP Pro on my work laptops:
-P III
-800MHz
-256 MB Ram

On one laptop windows won't boot. I was having pci.sys and setupdd.sys errors when booting from the XP cd, but I extracted the pci.sys file and reseated the loose Ram. The computer still will not load windows. It boots, but crashes during the XP boot screen. I tried Safe Mode, Last Good Config, and Normal, no difference.

Because it is a work computer, I need to salvage the information on the hard drive.

Let me know if this is already posted somewhere, or if I should post it elsewhere.

Thanks!

ok like if i am unable to boot into the windows in anyway is there a way to do a system restore through the dos mode or through any mode if suppose the system is only able to get into the dos mode in xp say by putting in a bootable floppy.

well if u want to format the hard drive what u can do is u can get a bootable floppy of win 98 and insert it and then let the system boot from it then u can go in to your drive and format it with the format command.

No, chryslerIII, that's not necessarily correct. That will only work for people who have the hard drive partitioned as FAT32 partitions, because the Win98 boot floppy cannot handle NTFS partitions.

And frankly, anyone using Windows XP on FAT32 partitions is a bit silly!

Thanks dani