To save me having to reinstall win xp every time c:/windows/system32 gets corrupted, how would i use the recovery console to repair it? any help would be appreciated!
I would rather find out why your files get corrupted. One possibility is that you are overclocking with an nforce2 bios or, with that same bios, that you are changing too many options at the same time while in the bios. Viruses are a possibility also.
Not to be too cynical, but system recovery console doesn't always work. As a matter of fact, in my years of being an NT admin, I've only seen the recovery console work properly once. Even in that isolated incident, other (registry) problems with the OS caused me to need to clean install Windows all over again. Bottom line: don't use Windows for anything too important, and make constant backups! One thing you can do is make a bootable set of CDs containing an image of a good, clean install. Then when Windows commits sepukku, you will only have to spend a few hours getting it going again rather than a day or two.
well it sometimes happens when i do something like uninstall something. In my previous posts i asked help because i had trouble reinstalling. that was the reason i was forced to reinstall and incase it happened again i needed a way of fixing the OS without losing all my programs. (its happened a lot of times!) Does the fixboot command work?
Fixboot does work if the MBR has been deleted, but it doesn't fix any system files, if that's what you're asking. I guess the bottom line to my previous answer is that usually when a system file is corrupted, you just have to reinstall.
so will reinstalling to the same hard disk partition and under the same windows folder (over the previous installation) preserve my programs? if not then i am mistaken cuz a coputer mag said that it preserved your programs.
It could be that you misunderstood the article, or it could be that the authors simply don't know their stuff. In any case, you can reinstall Windows over itself, and your programs will still be there. However, the registry keys for those programs will have been lost, so most programs won't work at all, and others will have problems. One way to at least prevent you from having to backup/restore your data (i.e. "My Documents") every time you reinstall is to make a seperate partition on your hard drive for data than for the OS and software. That way if your OS crashes, your data files won't be affected (unless you accidentally delete your data partition when you're reinstalling!)...
