windows system32 config system is corrupt in Windows Server 2003
December 28, 2006
Resolution
1. Insert your Windows Server 2003 CD and reboot from the CD drive
[To boot from CD, go to BIOS Setup option on startup and select your CD/DVD drive as the first boot drive, save the present settings and exit]
Your computer will reboot & will boot from Windows Server 2003
2. Press ‘R’ when offered the option of using the Windows Recovery Console
Recovery Console will prompt at the command prompt type the following:
C:\WINDOWS >cd system32\
this changes the current directory to C:\Windows\System32
ren config configold
This renames the config folder to configold
mkdir config
this makes a new directory called config
cd config
changes the current directory to c:\Windows\System32\Config
then type the following lines pressing enter after each one
copy c:\windows\repair\system
copy c:\windows\repair\software
copy c:\windows\repair\sam
copy c:\windows\repair\security
copy c:windows\repair\default
after each line it should say:
1 file copied
type: exit
Now Server will reboot
[To boot from Hard Drive, go to BIOS Setup option on startup and select your Hard drive as the first boot drive, save the present settings and exit]
February 5, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Excellent process. Saved me many hours of rebuilding a corrupted system.
Thanks,
Buz
April 10, 2007 at 2:07 am
My windows going blank.. what should i do..
??
April 11, 2007 at 6:47 am
Thanks for suggestion, hope this works!
April 11, 2007 at 7:41 am
This doesn’t work on my server though!!!!!
May 10, 2007 at 8:45 am
What will this fix do? Does it work on a Small Business Server? Will it change any configurations (e.g. Exchange etc)?
May 16, 2007 at 11:07 am
No changes required for exchange
It as fixed lots of issues for different ppl.
Its all depends on OS.
Try & check
May 21, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Works a treat and I see errors like this a lot in my line of work and I hadn’t come across it before.
May 22, 2007 at 7:49 am
Thanks You ver Much this is really save my time
June 30, 2007 at 2:31 am
i need to download the 32 config were do i do that
July 5, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Works!
September 29, 2007 at 3:57 am
Worked! Thanks; this solved the issue with the server of a customer. And saved me a lot headache however this only succeeded after I made an image of the drive and followed the procedure with the server drive connected to my workstation. In de server itself the windows recovery console crashed everytime.
November 21, 2007 at 7:06 am
Got this error message on a server used for testing, so it contained only Windows and VMware Server. Reinstalling wouldn’t have been much worse, but knowing the repair option should be useful somehow, I set out to actually solve the problem, not only overwrite it..
Your article solved the problem completely, however I notice that all user settings are gone, and I have to reinstall VMware Server application. It was due for an upgrade anyways..
Thanks a lot for this excellent solution!
TP
December 10, 2007 at 4:25 pm
for some reason i can do all but copy over the new files it just keeps saying the system cannot find the file specerfied.
many thanks jon
December 10, 2007 at 6:17 pm
as it turns out the c:\windows repair file is missing the system,software, sam, security and default files are missing wot can i do apart from a fully reinstall to sort this
January 22, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Thank you! This this brought my SBS 2003 box back to life.
January 31, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Yo,
Came in this morning and the server was thrashed by an electrical storm the night before. Got the corrupted message … did chkdsk 5x’s before it reported the HDD clean. It was ugly. Was on the phone w/ Dell server support (needed a little help getting the controller booted so that the repair console could see the disks … I had always ignored the F6 option). Anyway, aside from that, me and Dell didn’t know how to fix it, I was able to recover and boot into OS using these instructions. After being impressed, the Dell rep asked me to FW this page to him and he’s going to run it up the flagpole as a solution to problems such as this. I backed up my critical data, and restored the server from backup. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS TECH NOTE. YOU SAVED MY LIFE.
February 12, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Hi Greg,
With Pressure you can always my blog for more tech tips.
Did dell guys run it up the flagpole as a solution to problems such as this?
Cheers
Bala
February 27, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Top Bloke
works a treat although i did get access denied on the cd windows dir but a simple logon with cured this thank you yet again.
Rob
March 14, 2008 at 10:35 am
Many other guides detail copying the backed up files into the config folder which was not working for me. This guide gets you to create a new config folder which worked a treat for me and saved me the time of a rebuild. Only problem was the backed up files were quite out of date. Is there any way to force more regular updates of system files?
March 14, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Hi Daniel,
I am glad to here that you have successfully recovered your server back online.
Can i know what regular updates of system files you are looking for?
please post your quires http://creativerides.forumotion.com