Hi Eddy,
This is very odd, I have never heard of this happening before.
While troubleshooting this you may want to install Erunt to ease the pain of
restoring the registry.
ERUNT - Registry Backup and Restore for Windows NT/2000/2003/XP
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
I would expect something like this to happen if there were a power failure
during the restore process. But this does not seem to be the case.
You will want to make sure the system malware free also.
Virus and Spyware removal and prevention steps:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/spyware.html
You may want to create a HiJackThis and examine it.
If you need help with this go to the following AumHa Forum and read the
Announcement before posting.
http://aumha.net/viewforum.php?f=30
Has there been any new hardware or software installed recently?
Are there any Norton applications installed?
Will System Restore complete in Safe Mode?
--
Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member:
http://dts-l.org
"Eddy" wrote
> Using XP Pro, fully updated. Scanned for Viruses, etc, by several scanners.
>
> If I use System Restore to restore to any restore point, it appears to
> proceed normally until the PC reboots, at which point I get a Blue Screen
> "Windows/System32/Config/System file missing or corrupt" error.
>
> Booting to a "Recovery Console" shows that System is indeed missing from
> the Windows/System32/Config/ folder (and also all the other registry hives
> SOFTWARE, SAM, SECURITY, and DEFAULT)
>
> It appears that System Restore has deleted the "old" registry but had
> failed to restore its saved copy of the registry.
>
> I can recover the situation by booting to a Recovery Console and following
> the instructions from the MS KB Q307545 to manually restore the registry
> from the Windows\repair\ backups. The PC then boots ok again.
>
> I have tried turning System Restore off (to flush out all restore points),
> rebooting, and then turning System Restore on again and making a new
> restore point, but if I try to restore to the newly-created restore point
> the same problem arises!
>
> Anyone got any ideas what might be causing this?
>
> Eddy.