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All righty then...
Dell Opti.GX1 (yep I know, a dinosaur), suppose to be W98, shows NT 4.1. Purch. on ebay for a steal. Assured it worked. Yeah, right.

Well. I did only pay $5.50 .
Sounds normal. No unusual beeps. Inside appears secure & proper.
1) F2 gets you into bios....but alt P does NOT get you to page 2 of bios. and I am assuming since not on pg.1 - the panel to set boot sequence is on pg.2. Can't change order until I can get there. It appears not to recognize CD drive (shows power, & opens). Floppy drive sounds grinding...not a good sign - but it reads them fine - got to disk #1, loaded drivers etc. WinNT executables.....(off bootdisk.com - under boot disks WinNT 4.1 makes a set of three floppies from three cmd. downloads). .....But - when it asks you to place disk #2 in drive and press Enter when ready........enter causes nothing to happen.
Trying to get this thing started without a CD, so I can get it wiped, and do a proper full install.
Do Not Have any recovery CD's for anything NT.

2) Upon just powering up, and allowing it to try booting.....Dell screen, bios A07, black screen w/
OS Loader 4.01.7
Press spacebar NOW to invoke Hardware Profile/Last Known Good Menu
Windows NT could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM
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This is a registry file, and I have a winXP, and a win98 machine in the house....but uncertain how to get that file off one machine and onto the bad one.
~~~~~~~~~~
No further commands can occur after that error message....it just sits. ctl alt del doesn't even restart it.

My hypothesis is - the kid who sold it to me decided to "wipe" it himself, didn't have the skills, sent it anyhow - and I will be changing out the hard drive instead of fiddling with this NT garbage.

Am I right ? It is only a 8GB drive, and I have a couple proper Maxtor's sitting here that are at least 15 and 20 GB - that will fit the opening and the mobo.
I just hate giving up on a live one, and this is suppose to be for a third grader to just look stuff up - not gaming, etc. - so Mom wasn't real worried about "space".
~~~~~~~~~~
Answers.?
Ideas?
Links?
I live to serve !
Thanks in advance.
nan:eek:

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Dani AI

Generated

Quick diagnostic and practical steps based on 's report.

The loader stopping with a missing SYSTEM hive means the NT registry is gone or corrupt; that by itself will block boot. Before swapping drives, try inexpensive checks that commonly fix older Dells: use a PS/2 keyboard (many GX1-era boards do not support USB keyboards in BIOS or during floppy-based setup), and enter Setup with F2 then use the on-screen navigation keys. If the BIOS pages or boot-order controls are unreachable, clear CMOS (remove battery or use the CMOS jumper) to restore defaults, then re-enter Setup.

Floppy and CD behavior points to either media/drive problems or input not being seen. A grinding floppy can mean bad disks or a failing drive — test those floppies in another PC and remake them on fresh media. If the optical drive never appears in BIOS, check IDE cable routing and master/slave jumpers; a CD will not boot if it is jumpered incorrectly or if cable-select ordering is wrong.

If comfortable removing the drive, attach it to a working Windows PC as a secondary (or use a USB-IDE adapter) and look for a repair copy of the registry hive at WINNT\REPAIR\SYSTEM. If that file exists it can replace the corrupt hive — do this only on the same machine’s disk; copying a SYSTEM hive from a different computer will usually break the install. Example when the bad drive is mounted as D::

rename D:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM SYSTEM.bad
copy D:\WINNT\REPAIR\SYSTEM D:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

If there is no repair copy, a clean reinstall is often faster. Note that many GX1-era BIOSes have an approximate 8.4GB legacy limit — a 15/20GB drive may need its capacity-limiting jumper or a BIOS update to be fully usable. For a simple kid-friendly machine, installing Windows 98 (or a lightweight Linux) on a drive matched to the BIOS limits will usually be the least trouble.

Member Avatar for Nanci252

Please don't shy from this because I sound like I know what I'm doing !
I am truly lost, and this spazzes me out, not to figure what the ten words are that tie the whole works together !

Fresh point of view. Clear brain. Whatever ya want to call it.

Thank you.
Nan

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