Well, I had a problem and then I fixed it, but lots of my settings are lost. I always used to have a little thing on my screen show up when I changed the volume using the button on my computer. That no longer shows up. Also, on the taskbar, I used to have a battery meter on the right, just left of the icons next to the time. I would like to get these two things back. My computer is an IBM thinkpad T30 and I’ll give you some details on the problem I had earlier.

I got a bsod when windows tried to load, with the error c0000218 which said that the file c:\windows\system32\config\software could not be found, so I replaced it with the file at c:\windows\repair\software and the computer could then load, but my settings were lost here.
I just remembered something else which actually probably caused the problem. When I was desparately looking for solutions, I went into windows recovery mode and tried the command "fixboot" which said it would create new boot instructions or something like that… It didn’t colve my problem though. I think it might have caused these new ones. Is there any way to go back to the old settings??
one more little detail to add

Here’s the IBM downloads page for my computer. What on here might help me?
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-42358#PA

As far as I can tell, the hard disk is ok (it still shows up in my RAID set), but Windows XP Pro won’t boot, and gives me a system error ("windows\system32\config\system is missing or corrupt.")

Unfortunately I don’t have the original OS disc, but i have a XP Media Edition CD, which came with a recent Dell system purchase. I attempted to repair my old comp from the CD, but the Windows Recovery console gave me a "cannot find hard disk" error. The console gives me the same error when I tried formatting a brand new hard disk with the CD, so I am thinking something is up with the Dell software. It’s understandable that Dell would prohibit the software being used on any system but the one your bought from them.

So, would a new XP Pro CD work to repair the registry, even if it’s not the original, or is there something else I’m missing?