How To Perform a System Restore From the Recovery Console in Windows XP

Warning! This is dangerous and not for the faint of heart. You could make your computer worse than it already is. This is a last resort option. You have been warned.

1) Boot to your Windows XP CD and choose the “Recovery Console” option.

2) Once you get to a command prompt you will need to use the change directory command to get tot the root folder. [ Type cd \ and press enter ]

3) Now you need to change to the system restor folder. [ Type: cd system~1\_resto~1 and press enter ]

4) List the contents of the folder. [ Type: dir and press enter ]

5) Scroll to the end of the directory list and make note of the next to last restore point number not the last number. [ RP2…RP3 etc ]

6) Change directories to the next to last or a previous directory if you think there is a good reason to. [ Type: cd RPxx ]

7) Change to the snapshot folder. [ Type: cd snapshot ]

8)Overwrite the existing system registry entries. [ Type: copy _registry_machine_system c:\windows\system32\config\system ] [ press enter ]

9) Overwrite the existing software registry entries. [ Type: copy _registry_machine_software c:\windows\system32\config\software ] [ press enter ]

If you see an access is denied error then perform the following steps:

[ Type CD\ ] [ press Enter ]
[ Type cd windows\system32\config ] [ press Enter ]
[ Type ren system system.bak ] [ press Enter ]
[Type exit ] [ press Enter ]

Reboot to the recovery console and start at step 1 again. Once you replace the existing registry settings then reboot and see if Windows XP boots properly.