I had one big scare this morning after booting up my HP laptop. I just had to check something before breakfast, then did my morning routine of taking a shower (yes, I do this once in a while!), easting my breakfast, sending the wife to work and beating the kid (for all you people from child services – I am kidding!) and went back into my office, only to find the screen displaying the terrifying message

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt
C:\windows\system32\config\system

You can attempt to repair this file by starting windows setup using the original setup CD-Rom.
Select “r” at the first screen to start repair.

I know you Mac user are now just giggling but I had such a scary message on a mac as well a while ago. There it was something that I only got the text prompt to log in and no graphical user interface. I like the Mac and am actually thinking of switching to it, but this specific point is not one to snicker about.

Obviously the first thought is “When did I back-up last?” and I was not too bad in this department. I would have lost some bit but not too critical.

OK, so it was finding a disk with XP Pro. Could not find the one with XP SP2 but I thought it would do. Pop it in and restart but after a while, instead of getting to the screen where I may type that ‘r’ I get a message

ntfs.sys corrupt – can not continue

or something to this effect. How could this be?? I am booting from a CD but to make sure I find another CD and try this one, with the same effect.

NOW WHAT?

Thoughts of evil-doing hackers enter my mind. I had this computer temporarily put in the DMZ of my router because this was the only way I could get bit torrent to work at a decent speed, but it still did not make too much sense because – I am booting from a CD!!

Maybe the installation looks for an existing OS on the drive and gets so confused by some nasty hackers droppings that it goes to heaven? And I still can’t find my CD with an XP Pro SP2.

Now thanks to Google – after booting up another computer – and some inspired searching I find a hint that this might be a memory problem – somebody had solved his problem by changing a memory module.

That’s definitely worth a try. Out comes the screw driver, the laptop flips over and is gutted from it’s memory. First attempt to just swap the two modules. There is a change, the computer error-beeps on startup, but still the message that this essential system file is missing.

Now the process of elimination – which is not too involved with only two memory modules, and we have the culprit…

Now I am writing this with a computer with only half a gig, but I have to say, I don’t really notice the difference – maybe if I want to start up photoshop and illustrator at the same time.

But not a problem, it will be a trip to the computer store and just get another one of those.