Orphaned Files

About a month ago a mate brought his comp round for me to look at, it wouldn’t boot (xp pro) due to System32/config being missing or corrupt - you know the stuff. Anyway, in goes the Hirens CD and it turns out his system32 folder showed as being completely empty :eek:

A quick check disc found a zillion orphaned files which it then fixed, and everything was back to normal in system32 folder and the computer booted as normal.

I’m guessing it was some kind of registry screw up, even though he said he turned the comp off as normal in the evening and it wouldn’t boot the following day.

Well today I had a similar problem (win 7) - unable to boot as no valid OS found. I run win 7 & xp pro on separate drives, neither would boot even after altering hdd boot priority in Bios.

Same as previous problem, orphaned files were the culprit (didn’t look where, just ran the chkdsk first thing)

Question is - could there be some kind of malware/trojan flying around (nothing found on a scan of either computer) or is it simply Windoze in any format that still retains this annoying random registry (I think) screw up ?

Had a similar problem with a Tosh lappy that wouldn’t boot Windoze and I was looking for a OS disc to repair the Win installation. Turned out was a known issue with Win XP solved by booting without RAM and then refitting. Don’t know why, but it worked and the lappy is working fine now.