XP can't keep files from corrupting.

This has occurred on a work PC after uninstalling Symantec PCAnywhere, and on a Windows 2000 server for an unknown reason. Now, after uninstalling Weather Channel weather app, my wife's XP HOME SP2 can not boot due to corrupt \windows\system32\config\system file. This is the system portion of the registry.

Of course, the only manufacture option is to nuke the hard drive, loose all data, and be back to oem. I have Mozy, sure, but after a month only 1GB of the 1.6GB of data has uploaded.

So I use BART PE to get into the NTFS file system and restore an old SYSTEM file to replace the corrupt one. This is the original SYSTEM file, so it's back to the initial install of XP HOME. But at least I keep my data.

After an hour, bootup ends up going into a resolution that the Laptop's LCD doesn't support. Boot into VGA mode and re-install the drivers. Set the resolution to a proper one. Reboot.

Ok, so re-install the antivirus and reboot is the next step.

Then activation. But what is this? Activation tries to launch IE via an HTA, and fails. This is because the re-install of XP replaced part of IE with 6.0, even though I have 7.0 installed. IE is fried. So I went into the firefox directory and launched it. God, I love programs that don't require the registry. From firefox, I re-downloaded firefox and properly installed it. The I downloaded IE7 from Google (Microsoft wouldn't let me from Mozilla) and tried to launch it. But it fails because it gets confused about having some IE6 files and some IE7 files & patches.

So, Remove IE7 and reboot. C:\WINDOWS\ie7\spuninst\spuninst.exe uninstalls IE7. I am in the process of downloading SP2, which will take hours, so I won't know if IE6 works or not until the morning. But I was able to activate now. And apparently that is the problem with the IE7 reinstall, as it will get past the initial error. Though I don't plan on re-installing until I reboot.

Automatic Updates service is no longer listed. I did the re-register to get it to appear, but it will not function because it's still not installed right. I guess that's because I have the 1.0 version from the reinstall mixed in with the 3.0 version released not long ago.

Thanks, Microsoft, for a fun evening. Why can't a system restore point create alternate system.sav files and if system is corrupt, give me the option to use a previous system file?