Date: 10/22/05 (Microsoft Windows)    Keywords: linux, microsoft

x-posted to my own journal, and another Windows community. If you guys have *any* idea what may have caused this, just so I can let my wife know and have a better idea myself... it would be appreciated. I'm primarily a Linux OS guy, and often going beyond basics and advanced stuff in Windows is a bit beyond me. Even one of my MS engineer friends was a bit stumped as to *what* caused this.

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How's this for insane? We had decided that my 512 RAM chip (same models, everything across the board as my wife's box, which always had worked, responded, even sounded flawless) should go to her to give her a full gig of RAM. The machine boots, but with no video, at all. Odd. Try swapping back the old 256 chip instead (the old PCs have only two slots on the board). Video, but... Windows failed to load because it can't find:

c:\windows\system32\config\system

Huh? WTF? We have no Windows media (or much anything right now) due to being technically in-move from one location to another so after getting blank CDs at Target, we get a Recovery Disk burned from an .iso found online. Sure enough, I can get in. But... her user is gone. The computer name is gone. Profiles, gone, and the entire system appears defaulted back to the OEM Windows installation. The main logon is passwordless and named "Owner" now, rather than my wife's name. The PC name is reset. All network settings, and all her personal data all still there in the folders for the user profile, however.

Gets better: the machine is "wobbly" now, in the words of our Microsoft engineer friend, who was utterly dumbfounded by what happened as I talked to him about it and worked on the system. Two vaguely plausible long shots: power surge as I powered down or up to install the new RAM, or "shite bad luck". He's very British. Any and all response to... anything on the system is very clippy and choppy now, regardless of what RAM is installed. Wife is in the process of backing up all her data to CD right now (1/2 way done so far).

Sunday I'm reinstalling Windows clean on her machine most likely.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/ms_windows/48421.html