PC has died - help!

Hi,
Please help .... my PC has died - on booting I get an error message saying "The following file is missing or corrupt - Windows\System32\Config\System"

The disk recovery program on the PC does not fix it, and I do not have a Windows recovery disk for the PC as one was not supplied - presumably the recovery program is supposed to fix everything. I tried using the recovery CD for a friend's PC but that didn't work either - although I can at least get a command prompt using that. Unfortunately even "dir" does not work so am now getting rather worried ...

No idea what caused the error - I had to switch it off by the power switch last time as it wouldn't shut down, but that's happened before and it's been OK.

Any help or suggestions greatly appreciated.
PC is supposedly still under warranty (Carrera), but one of those great 9-5 weekday telephone numbers, and a 9-5 weekday callout service, which is not much help for people with jobs!
Many thanks ....
Dave

Is that Carrera UK or US? It might be worth tracking down the warranty help.

You have a recovery program on the PC? Did you try all the options?

Microsoft lists the following fix but it is intended for Microsoft installs. It is hard to say what modifications Carrera imposed.

Anyway: You can create the 6 floppy boot disks as shown here:

How to obtain Windows XP Setup boot disks

Then try the following:

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