Need computer help. (Windows 2000)

[Fett]

I bought a "referb" laptop from a company on eBay about a year ago, it came with Windows 2000 Pro installed, but came with no CDs.

For some reason, I am having a problem with it now. It will not complete bootup, telling me that one of the system32 files is corrupt, I need to boot from the Windows 2000 Pro CD in order to do the repair. That is problem #1, I don't have said CDROM. I was going to just do an upgrade to XP, using the CDROM from my main computer....but I can't find it. So I am stuck now not having either CDROM, and no way to fix this problem. The laptop has no floppy drive, so I am stuck needing a CDROM.

Is there any way around this, or do I need to buy a new OS CDROM? If I am forced to, I guess I will buy a Windows XP CD...but I would like to be able to fix this without spending $100.

 

[fox-gt]

Some PCs can boot off an external USB CD-ROM drive. It depends on if the BIOS supports it.

 

[_jb_]

Do you know if there is a backup drive? Can you boot up in safe mode? If you have no backup driver, and can't log into Safe Mode, I think you're screwed.

 

[fox-gt]

One of your registry files is corrupted. You will not be able to boot into safe mode. You would have to boot off the CD and repair from the console.

Usually the files are in C:\winnt\system32\config or c:\windows\system32\config

software and system are the two I have ran across that get corrupted the most.