Loading and Running Recovery to restore registry

I know, I know…I should have been more careful.
I am (was) running Windows XP on a Dell Latitude D420.
I used RevoUninstaller to remove the Intel Pro Wireless Application. The removal included removing two registry items.
When I rebooted…I got stuck in the "blue zone" with - "Registry cannot load the hive (file)"
I think I have the Windows Installation CD - It's labelled "Reinstallation CD, Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 3".
I press F12 to change the location to boot, to the CD.
A blue scree nwith Windows Setup comes up.
A bunch of files (driver?) start loading….
and then I get an error like…ACPI.SYS - corrupted, or dac2w2K.sys corrupted, or cpqarray.sys corrupted.
I realize that I need to boot from the Windows CD disk, but I'm not getting the recovery option from the bootable CD with SP3. I also have a reinstallation CD, SP2
So I tried that and….it allowed me to start the recovery application.
It wanted an administrator password…Don't know what this is so I just pressed enter.
It gave me a dos prompt….
From another web site; http://www.5starsupport.com/ipboard/index.php?showtopic=3861
I took instructions to copy the System file from c:\windows\system32\config to a tmp directory and label it system.bak
That was supposed to work…but didn't.
I was supposed to then copy the Software file to the TMP directory…but "The file could not be copied".
so….what do I do?
PS - I previously ran a dell diagnostic utility and got a MSG error Code 146…

Have you tried booting to Safe Mode? See here: A description of the Safe Mode Boot options in Windows XP

Try this first though: How to start your computer by using the Last Known Good Configuration feature in XP

I tried both. Got the blue screen again.

The post you referred to had this: md tmp 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 copy C:\windows\system32\config\software C:\windows\tmp\software.bak delete C:\windows\system32\config\software copy C:\windows\repair\software C:\windows\system32\config\software What that does is save the current system and software hives of the registry then replace them with ones that was created when you installed XP. That's only helpful if you have a corrupted registry. If that were successful, on reboot, you should immediately do a System Restore to a date before the problem occurred, otherwise you end up with serious mismatches between the registry and installed software. Have you run chkdsk /r from the Recovery Console? If not, now is a good time to do that to correct any existing file system problems.

Could I get more specific instructions on how to run chkdsk /r from the recovery console?

Never mind. I figured it out… Just run chkdsk /r in the DOS prompt.

All fixed. though, it took a long time. Many thanks

Amen … the larger the drive and the more files the longer it takes. Glad it helped, thanks for letting me know.