NTOSKRNEL.EXE error- Solution is known but not able to use it! :-(

[jay123 0]

Hi all,

I know this question is answered previously here but my problem goes beyond that! Any help is appreciated.

 

my Windows 2000 Professional syste, rebooted due to a power outage, and when I tried to restart it I got the following error:

 

Windows NT could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt :

<winnt root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe

Please re-install a copy of the above file.

 

Now the real problem. I have 4 boot disks for Windows 2000 with me (Floppy diskettes). BUT I AM UNABLE TO SET THE BOOT SEQUENCE SO THAT THE SYSTEM STARTS BOOTING FROM A floppy. There are no options whatsoever in BIOS to change the boot seqence. How is this possible? (Mine is an old PC bought from a friend-an old IBM machine for a temperorary use). I always thought all machines provide a means of changing boot sequence.

 

In short, the system always tries to boot from Hard disk instead of Floppy drive (even if I put the floppy in the drive, there is no use).And I don't see options to reset the boot sequence in the BIOS. I have some valuable data (first reason to get stuck with that relic) in the disk and not keen on reformatting.

 

I thought hitting "fdisk /mbr" in DoS prompt should set some of the things right.Is there a way to access DOS without trying to load the Windows 2000 so that I can try to copy+paste the corrupted file/try booting?

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

Jay

 

[Sampson 0]

Despite the fact that it is old, the Bios really ought to let you boot from the A:\ drive. I don't believe I have ever seen a bios that doesn't.

That said, replacing the file called for will probably not fix your computer. The boot.ini may have gotten changed or a sector on the hard drive where it resides may have gotten flakey. Changing it may not help either.

Am I saying your hard drive is blitzed because of a lightning storm? I would say this - you can't really trust it, even if you can get it running.

Suggestion - buy a new hard disk and Ghost (using the DOS version) the old hard disk to the new one. If Ghost is successful, meaning that that whatever physical sectors are bad on the old hard disk were overcome, you should have your system up and running as it was but with a hard disk that you can trust.

This may seem radical and even expensive; it is. But, this will give you two options. If Ghosting works, your job is done. If it doesn't you can still reformat the new disk, put Windows on, attach your old disk as a slave to the new one and retrieve the data.