Operating System Corrupted?

Hi all

My friend had passed me a 3yr old centrino laptop which I have used for a further 2 yrs. It runs on XP Pro. Recently I bought a new Core 2 Duo laptop. Strangely a few days later, the old laptop just 'died' on me. Now when I turn in on, a message says "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupted: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM. You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup using the original CD ROM. Select 'r' at the first screen to start repair."

Are they referring to the Operating System? My friend had passed me a disc which I believe should be the recovery disc he made when he first got the laptop. However, when I insert the disc, let it run and press 'r', nothing happens. The same message keeps coming up. What else can I do?

I need some data from the old laptop. I have a backup for most of my data in a portable HDD but there is another problem and I shall post that in another thread later.

Can anyone help? Thanks.