Lately my computer has been not booting up right like it would boot and then it would say couldnt restore hibernation file I have Shut down expert for XP.

I have one hd with XP and run it as my main OS and I also use it for my alarm clock as it's hooked into my surround sound. So when I get ready to go to bed I put it in sleep so it'll shut off in a designated time and then it'll go into hibernate so it can be woke up and the alarm will go off.

Well sometimes as of late it hasn't been able to restore the hiber. files completely and it will not boot up and the other day it started up and it said could not start win32/config/system32
but I just restarted it and it worked fine.

well now all of a sudden none of my programs work and my sound doesn't work and theres program crashes when it starts up. and it says so and so program is not a vaild win32 image check your installation or something I tried system restore and it didn't work.

what can I do I have about 90 gigs of stuff I need to salvage.

I'm now on Vista on my other hard drive but I guess I just messed up any hope of getting system restore to work on XP.

As to the config error:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

As to the worst case scenario you can slave the hard drive in another computer in order to extract the data.

A repair install is another option if this is a retail version of XP.

If it is a manufactured computer then the restore options would depend on the manufacturer.

well I tried to a repair install but when I get to the install part of windows it says insert XP disc and it's in the drive and it says asms is needed and it gives me a location but it's like it doesn't even see the cd in the drive.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311755

I'm in DOS the install went fine but when it goes to install to the hard drive say if I don't push any buttons then it loads XP and then it says setup is now installing or something and it gets to the screen where it is supposed to install everything but it says insert your windows xp disc (e and click ok so I do that.

Then it says asms is needed select location so I select E:\I386 and it does nothing as a matter of fact no matter what I type in the box it does nothing I could type a sentence in the box and it wouldn't do anything.

Are you using a Microsoft retail XP CD?

Is this a computer you built?

In other words it is not a Dell or HP or IBM etc.

In DOS?

A Microsoft XP CD does nothing in DOS. Boot it and it goes.

As in the link I posted the error is the CD drive is inaccessible or the CD is not a retail Microsoft CD.

If this computer is a manufactured model you need the manufacturers recovery CD.

Also as to the two hard drives disconnect any hard drives that you are not installing to.

I built the computer and no the cd is not from Microsoft it's a slipstreamed SP2 cd.

If you are not using a retail Windows XP CD-ROM with a hologram (for example, if you are using a burned CD-ROM), try to run the Setup program from a retail CD-ROM with a hologram. To verify this, start the computer by using Recovery Console, and then check the C:\$win_nt$.~ls folder. Look for the Asms folder. If the folder is missing or the files that it contains are zero bytes, the CD-ROM was not burned correctly.

...

well I checked the cd-rom there is a folder asms and it has 4 folders in it all
with files inside each.

I'm gonna try it again.