RUN SYSTEM FILE CHECKER WITHOUT THE XP CD

The System File Checker (Sfc.exe) is a nice tool available in Windows XP which can often correct problems in an installation by replacing damaged or missing system files. It normally uses a folder on your hard drive called WINDOWS\System32\Dllcache as source for the replacement. (This folder is a hidden folder on your hard drive, which you won't be able to see unless you have modified the default settings of Windows Explorer -> Tools -> Folder Options -> View so that there is no check mark next to Hide protected operating system files.) But not all protected system files may be kept there, and that folder may also become corrupted. If SFC detects this, it will ask you to insert your Windows XP installation CD to get the necessary files. However, this can be inconvenient for various reasons. For example, you may be using a laptop computer and may not want to carry around your valuable installation CD with you.

If your hard drive is large enough, a good way to get around this inconvenience is to copy the entire I386 folder from the CD to your hard drive, and then modify the Registry so that SFC will use that folder as the source for its copying operations. This is how you do that.

Click on the Start button, type REGEDIT in the Run dialog box off the Start Menu, click OK, and then navigate to the following key in the left pane of the Regedit window:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\

When you click on the last subkey (Setup), you will see in the right pane a value called SourcePath, which will point to your CD-ROM drive. Assuming that you have made the copy of the I386 folder to the root of your C: drive, then all you have to do is double click on this value and change it to point to C: instead.

You might also need to modify the value SourcePath at this location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\