usbstor.sys is missing or corrupt

We have two PCs at home running with Windows XP. One is used by me and other by my brother. Yesterday his PC suddenly stopped working. He tried troubleshooting but nothing helped so he tried repairing Windows using Installation CD. While doing the same he received few error sin start saying something about Missing drivers but later the installation started getting failed with error stating “usbstor.sys is missing or corrupt.”

Can anybody please tell me what is this error all about and how can I get rid of the same? Thank you.

To me it sounds like faulty hardware, probably your hard drive. SO what you can do is insert the installation disk, restart the computer and press ‘R’ to get the Recovery Console. Once in recovery simply run the following command:

CHKDSK /R

Let the process complete. You can get more info about How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade (Reinstallation or Repair) on Windows XP in this Microsoft KB: http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;315341