I wrote this over at vwvortex forums and thought I should copy it over here to see if anyone could help me...
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The other night, I surfed the vortex, checked my email....the usual and turned my computer off for the night. Next morning I had to turn it on, and this message popped up:
"Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM.

You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows XP Setup using the original Setup floppy disk or CD-ROM.
Select 'r' at the first screen to start repair."

I managed to get my computer running so I can post this message/look for help by installing a fresh copy of XP on my second hard drive.

I have looked on MS Knowledge Base and found a similar problem but it has something to do with installing XP before installing Windows 2000. I tried what they had suggested but it worked to no avail.

So I guess I have two options - 1)Copy over all the information I need to keep and reinstall XP on the hard drive or 2)Find out what is the problem and fix it

Two problems:
I have already started to copy over all my information, but everything stored in the \Documents and Settings\Clint\" folder is not accessible. I keep getting "Access is Denied". I have quite a few pictures in the My Documents\My Pictures folder I would like to keep. I wish there was a way around this.

Anyone have suggestions?

 

Can you boot to a dos prompt and copy them that way?

 

I can boot to the "XP Recovery Console" using the Windows CD, but it will not allow me to copy more than ONE FILE AT A TIME. I cannot use

c:\> copy c:\*.* d:\copied\

because it says no wildcards are allowed. I've fiddled around with it a little and use the "SET" command to allow wildcards, but there is no way around it that I can see. The XP Recovery Console isn't exactly DOS either, its just a similar version with some VERY basic features.

If I try to boot to a regular DOS prompt, then it will give me the "Access Denied" problem I had in the Windows GUI.