Cannot reload win xp on formatted hdd.

[edbuck]

Friends 120gb hdd had 229 viruses. was running Win Xp. AVG finally removed all but left WinXP unusable. Formatted hdd. But now cannot get win Xp reinstalled. Message on several attempts was "missing or corrupt file "\windows\system32\config\system" when trying to boot on new install. Formated the c: partition after each unsuccessful attempt.

[DMR]

At what exact point during the install did it fail out to that error?

[edbuck]

It fails immediately after asking for choice of operating systems to start

[DMR]

If you've totally reformatted the pre-existing Win XP partition and are attempting a full reinstall from scratch, you should not even get that choice.

It sounds like you haven't really totally wiped/reformatted the pre-existing XP install and therefore aren't truly performing a "clean" install this time. Can you give more specific info on the steps you've taken while trying the install please?

[edbuck]

If you've totally reformatted the pre-existing Win XP partition and are attempting a full reinstall from scratch, you should not even get that choice. It sounds like you haven't really totally wiped/reformatted the pre-existing XP install and therefore aren't truly performing a "clean" install this time. Can you give more specific info on the steps you've taken while trying the install please?

I tookyour advice and ran "Killdisk" which zeroed the drive. After reloading Win XP i added AOL issue 9 and same thing happened to me. I had to format drive again. Thanks for the advice.