Ok, I'm running Windows XP Pro and have been for about 2 months with great results.
Last night I decided, "hmm, lets go to the Windows update site and update as necessary." So I did so and all "critical" updates were installed. Of course I thought nothing of it until I woke in the morning.
Right before windows started to load I got an error message stating something like..ummm.."\Windows\System32\Config\System is either missing or corrupt. Boot from original installation disk and press 'r' to run repair console and try to repair the file yourself."

What the hell!, I yelped and woke my wife up. So I rebooted thinking "Windows will be Windows." Nope, same error message. So I went ahead and booted from the CD and went to the recovery console. I know I don't know much about DOS and I am no computer guru, but the recovery console should be called the "examination" console. As all I could do mostly is view files and rename, copy, delete them. I went through all of the commands and NONE of them allowed me repair my "system" file that was corrupted. (I thought it was corrupted as I found it to be in it's directory) Anyway, I tried the /rebuild command on the system file but couldn't as the PC told me that I had to run chkdsk first. I did so and chkdsk reported NO problems with my configuration! Long story short, I spent the better half of the day re-installing windows and all of my games and stuff.

I probably could have avoided this if I had system restore on, but I choose not to as my slow *** PC needs all the resources it can get.


What would you have done?

I ask so I may be prepared for a future occurance.