I don’t know. I don’t have its cd as well. the video card was put by the circuit city people years ago
Well, I opened the inside of the computer. a label on the card says eGeforce Fx 5200 128MB PCI
Download and install the driver from here http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_175.19_whql.html then try a normal boot
yeah it still didn’t boot normally. also, after the driver installed and it was going to restart; there was a end program thing and the title was you should not see me. is that normal?
Now it can’t even start in safe mode. I get a message that says windows/system32/config/system is either missing or corrupt
This now sounds like a drive problem as the config file is not touched apart form the insertion of the service key for the video, did it shut down normally ?
To shut down the computer I have to press and hold the power button. So, this is a hard drive problem?
Are you able to achieve the safe mode menu ?
yeah I can get to menu
OK first try VGA mode again please, if this works then your video card is history
vga mode didn’t work, it says the same thing. file is missing or corrupt.
Run a repair install of XP… Details here http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/topic/138-how-to-repair-windows-xp/
"Next, Windows Setup will find existing Windows XP installations. You will be asked to repair an existing XP installation, or install a fresh copy of Windows XP.
If no installations are found, then you will not be given the option to repair. This may happen if the data or partition on your drive is too corrupted.
Note: If you install a fresh copy, all data on that partition will be lost!"
I don’t get the repair option. The lists shows - C: Partition1 [NTFS] and Unpartitioned space
So it is not even seeing the windows partition at all, this would suggest that the MFT table is corrupt
Are you able to get to the command prompt on the safe mode menu ?
If so go there and run checkdisc :
chkdsk /r
You mean safe mode with command prompt? No that doesn’t work either
It looks like you have lost the partition data. Did this computer originally have XP or 7
I ran the repair chksdsk using the XP installation cd and now it can boot in safe mode. Yeah the computer always had XP
Sir, can it be saved or is it doomed?
From safe mode select the VGA option and see if that lets you boot
yes it did boot in vga mode