A hard drive in a computer system is the most basic device for data storage. With the advancements in technology and with the amount of time and work we dedicate on our systems, the storage capacity of the hard drive has increased immensely. Along with that, the hard drive has become more compact making it convenient to carry around. Having said that, at times you are unable to start your computer because of hard drive corruption. Such corruption issues may occur due to various reasons such as corrupt system registry, virus infections, power outages, faulty hardware components, etc. In such cases, there are numerous corrective measures that you can try to recover files. If nothing works out, then you should use a third-party Partition recovery software to recover all the Windows data.

Let us consider a situation in which you are unable to start your Windows 2000 system. The following error message is displayed in this regard:

"Windows 2000 could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:

\winnt\system32\config\systemd"

Cause:

The most prominent cause of this startup issue is that the SYSTEM hive of the computer is corrupt or damaged.

Resolution:

To overcome this Windows 2000 startup issue, you would need to restore the SYSTEM registry hive using the Windows 2000 CD. To do this, the following steps are required:

Insert the Windows 2000 CD ROM in the CD-ROM drive and restart the system.

When the 'Welcome to Startup' screen is displayed, press R to repair the Windows installation.
Press C to repair the Windows installation using the Recovery Console.
Rename the system file in the '%SystemRoot%\System32\Config' folder by using the following commands. Press Enter after typing every command:
cd system32
cd config
ren system system.old
Copy the ' %SystemRoot%\Repair\System' file to the '%SystemRoot%\System32\Config' folder by using following commands. Press Enter after typing every command:
cd..
cd..
cd repair
copy system %systemroot%\system32\config
Restart the computer.

Your computer should start perfectly after performing these steps. However, if it is not so then you should take the services of a third-party Partition recovery software. With the help of these read-only data recovery tools, you can recover files without causing any damage to the existing files or storage media.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is the most efficient Partition recovery software that recovers lost, deleted, or formatted data from various storage devices including iPods, pen drives, memory cards, etc. Supporting NTFS, FAT, and exFAT file systems and recovering deleted emails from MS Outlook and Outlook Express, this Partition recovery software is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, 2000, and NT4(SP6).