system file missing or corrupt

I am trying to fix a dell for a friends girlfriend. Ok I followed the guides for the repair console but when i tried to copy the system file from Repair folder to the config folder, it couldn't find a system file. I pulled the drive and and put it in my rig and found a system.bak file in the repair folder. I renamed the system.bak to system and put it in the config folder and now it boots....thank god.

THe problem is how do I get it to boot to the old desktop environment. Its XP home edition and only has one account enabled. The documents and settings folder has 4 different folders in it....All Users, Owner, Cmitsch, and Owner.dfwdl911. The last one must be from when I copied the new system file to the config folder. I would lke it to boot using the Cmitsch desktop that way i dont have to find all the documents and email for that user and transfer them to the new desktop. Can I somehow change this???

bumpity bump bump bump

Log on/off user doesn't do it?

no, the only user it says it has is the Owner account.......I tried to add a Cmitsch account but of course it created another new account instead of using the old ones configuration...

Right, well somewhere on that drive(S) is each user accounts settings and profile unless it was deleted somehow.

I would say that the system.bak file you used to restore to was possibly not the one you needed, or their are more files that you need to restore to acces the other user accounts.

Can you do an XP restore point now that it boots, or booting "Last known good configuration"?

tryed both reboots and the restore point only gives me a choice from a day ago. Oh well none of her programs are really working either so I'll ask her what she wants done....reformat or just reinstall the programs and move her files to the new account.....

El<(')>Maxi said:

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I would say that the system.bak file you used to restore to was possibly not the one you needed, or their are more files that you need to restore to acces the other user accounts.

Click to expand...

When I did the repair console it said it found and copied the others like software, sam, security and default, ill try and recopy those over and see what happens. The problem is It couldnt find the System file it needed.......