do not worry so much about copying it anyway as its either missing or corrupt anyways. try the 2nd and 3rd parts of the command given

c>delete c:\windows\system32\config\system

and

c>copy c:\windows\repair\system c:\windows\system32\config\system

please be aware that i copied from the repair folder for software, sam, security, and default as well, i lost my user accounts and ended up with just an administrator account with none of the installed programs functioning properly. to get it sorted i had to get in with a bartpe built ubcd and then restored these from the backups that i had done from the first lines of the command prompt ie (copy c:\windows\system32\config\sam c:\windows\tmp\sam.bak).

see here

http://www.woundedmoon.org/UBCD/UBCD.html and here

and here

http://www.woundedmoon.org/win32/drvimagerxpsetup_2.2.html

also putting the commands in a txt file particularly

mdtmp
copy c:\windows\system32\config\system c:\windows\tmp\system.bak
delete c:\windows\system32\config\system
copy c:\windows\repair\system c:\windows\system32\config\system

and save it as regcopy.txt in c:\windows

then you can run it as a batchfile from the recovery console command

ie

c:\windows>batch regcopy.txt

tada

please note these suggestions i gleaned from elsewhere (credit to you if these are your ideas) but it has taken at least 3 days of hard searching and messing around to find this all out and to get it all sorted. hope this helps someone.

This problem I believe is specific to the persons Motherboard.

I have built two systems with the new Nforce 4 Ultra Board. It is a system with an PATA drive and a SATA drive non raid configuration.

Windows During the Install, installs NTLDR and it's necessary files about 4 in all to the PATA drive and the rest of the OS to the Raptor SATA drive. As is my want.

I understand I could jump through hoops to have it load everything from the SATA but I don't want to.

I get the same error of the inability of Windows to find its windows files. Specifically the primary System files found in Windows\System32\config

Here is the funny thing. And I believe this is a problem for lots of people but it is being addressed as a different problem.

IF THE WINDOWS XP CD IS IN THE CD ROM DRIVE
The system boots no problem into windows

IF IT IS NOT
Then Windows can't find windows\system32\config\ files

DO not THINK IT IS GRABBING files off of the Windows CD, that is not the case, nor is it possible, because if it wasn't loading the aproppriate SOFTWARE and SYSTEM files the system would not work.

SO this is a problem with either the EPOX bios, or all nforce 4 boards.
I can not know because I have not worked with other NFORCE boards.