Starting W2K

I have a Dell Precision 330 that initially gave an error message of “hd drive failure strike F1 to continue or F2 for setup.” I resolved that error message only to encounter the following “Windows cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupted WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM.” I was able to copy the missing/corrupted file to the root directory using the Recovery Console on W2K CD. Now system gets to the “Starting Windows strike F8 for other boot options” page and hangs. The hard disk has a lot of information that I need to keep so I would like to avoid a complete reinstall if possible.
Does anyone know why the OS is hanging at startup and how I can correct this problem?
Any suggestions will be appreciated.