Cannot boot windows error

Allright, i am a big computer guy in my little small town, and all my friends come to me with their issues, im currently working on 2 pc's tonight, 1, a gaming rig im building for a pal, and the other, my friend brought over because it gave him the black screen of uber death when booting. So it says: Windows cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupt

Windows\System32\config\system

So i take the drive, plug it into my pc, as a second drive, boot up. Then i look into the drive, i go to windows folder, then system 32 folder, then i go to config folder, and omfg, its empty. im like....oh god. SO i like at my config folder, and its full of stuff, so i try moving my system file to his, well its in use lol. So like, Anyone got any ideas to get this thing booted? I tried repairing it with an xp cd, but it was pretty effin messed up. I couldnt get anywhere because it asked me a stupid question about like, what operating system do you want to log on to? and i could only type in 1 character, so i tried 1, then enter. it didnt effin repair anything, all it gave me was \Windows and i could type stuff after that. So does it want me to select the folder to repair?

I guess i can show my dad, hes good at doing stuff on this cool black screen full of stuff to type, its basically a huge cmd. all i know is to type dir, then press enter LOL. My dad also says that windows probably keeps a copy of this system file? Where could i find that?

Here is 5 options. (option 3 or 4 looks like your best bets.. System restore to the rescue!!!!)


NB: Put the drive in your PC first and back up the documents & settings folder or whatever else the guy needs saved. JIC.

If it's xp and he had system restore running there are recovery methods. It looks like they've already been posted. If you follow the instructions you should be good to go.

Yah its all good. Thanks alot Neuromancer