It is usually one of 4 things.

 

1. Corrupt file system, chkdsk will usually cure it if it is not severe.

 

2. Failing hard drive, or dead drive.

 

3. Malware

 

4. Heavily fragmented hard drive.

Try this :

How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545

artizen, not good advice, did you read the warning in the article??

 

"Warning Do not use the procedure that is described in this article if your computer has an OEM-installed operating system. The system hive on OEM installations creates passwords and user accounts that did not exist previously. If you use the procedure that is described in this article, you may not be able to log back into the recovery console to restore the original registry hives."

 

Dell uses OEM installations.

 

Always refer Dell owners to this article instead of the Microsoft one you posted.

 

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&dl=false&l=en&s=gen&docid=89C2285FB22749B5ABF7CCB9CB612D47&doclang=en

So I would follow step six:
Enter the Administrator password, if any, and press the key on the keyboard to display the C:\WINDOWS> prompt.
Except for the fact I am not able to do so. Normally i would press 1 to go to C:\WINDOWS, but now it just goes to the recovery console and has just C:\ displayed. I try to do the cd C:\Windows\system32\drivers but it says access denied. I have done a chkdsk, but all it says is that there is an problem and stops checking. I fear i might have to reinstall Windows, but i'm trying to avoid it at all costs. Any answer to this problem?
Thanks a lot,
Theflexmaster

The only thing I can suggest at this point is this software, not free, but can work miracles on recovering corrupted data on hard drives.

 

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

"artizen, not good advice, did you read the warning in the article??"

I've read it and I've done it often. This is refering to the HP/paq disks and not those from Dell.

Many members have reported the problem described in the article when using this method.

 

It is bad advice but I am sure you be there to help them when things go wrong.

Basically what i've decided to do is take my SATA hard drive and put it into another computer and set it up as a slave drive. Then i just took my info off of it and put it on an alternative harddrive. Now i'm just reinstalling windows and that should fix it. It's reallly annoying getting the info because i have to change privilages to the files, but oh well. I pretty much got all i needed back.

Thanks for the help guys,

Theflexmaster

That's a good idea. FYI, I backup my system daily using Acronis True Image to an external drive.