Hello, I messed up our 4 year old computer!! Tried to restore to a previous time. Not what I wanted, undid the restore. DELETED LOTS of FILES from the recycle bin. Did a reboot.....

now comes up....
Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\system32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

You can attempt to recover .....

I have the original operating system CD and try the restore..... I can't get past the administrator password.

Also, I really need to save the info on this harddrive. My QUICKBOOKS, etc. is on there!!

any ideas? Greatly appreciate the help.
I did pick up a second harddrive but I don't think 'I' want to mess with that. (Making a new harddrive then setting the 'original' one as a slave...)

B&BI meant the "repair" option from the windows XP operating cdI found help!

I used the recovery mode (which comes up to the DOS prompt)

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545

I "think" what I did, was create a new users, I was able to see all the files on the computer, copied new system32\config files from the last "good" restore point. Moved them over to where they needed to be.

My computer booted up OK and all my files, etc are there. All I can say is HOLLY SMOKES!!

[emailprotected]!
You got lucky, but congratulations. This would indicate a need to backup our files on a regular basis, eh?