NT Gurus: How do I repair bad NTFS.sys file on a HD?

[MadRat]

How do I repair bad NTFS.sys file on a HD? Its not something the repair utility on the NT cd will fix. Its also something that cannot be accessed directly because the system stops before it completes the "NT Loader" file.

Any ideas?

 

[MadRat]

<bump>

What, nobody knows?

 

[nEoTeChMaN]

Just reinstall the NT OS....just remember to change C:\winnt to something like C:\winnt2.

That way all your data on the hard drive is still there.

 

[MadRat]

So installing the OS on an NTFS partition doesn't remove the data? Sounds dangerous to me. We cannot access any data on the partition becuase NTFS is scrambled...

 

[marcio]

How do you know that the problem is with the ntfs.sys? Is it a stop error 0x24? If so, go to support.microsoft.com and look for Q228888.


If you reinstall, you might lose all the data. How can you reinstall if the file system is not being recognized? Answer: NT installer might reformat the hard drive.

 

[live4spd]

You might try putting your hard drive into another NT system then copying the ntfs.sys file over. Note you will have to copy the file with the correct service pack revision.

Ryan

 

[MadRat]

live4spd-

Yeah, my thought exactly. Trying this next.

 

[MadRat]

No such luck. Going to have to resort ot Partition Magic and see if its recoverable.

 

[marcio]

Running the recovery console and running chkdsk failed as well?

 

[MadRat]

Too late, she's reformatted.

 

[Kanedo]

For future references, Ontrack makes a program called EasyRecovery Pro. I was able to retrieve my files with this program after my NTFS partition messed up. It does some kind of low level reading of the hard disk which allows it to recovery the files.

 

[bassoprofundo]

Winternals ERD Commander allows you to make boot floppies or CD that will boot to a command line NT interface so that you can replace files, reset passwords, run CHKDSK, etc. It's a great program that I use all the time.

 

[MadRat]

Awww, someone had the presence of mind to SAVE that hard drive. I thought the new image was on top of that specific hard drive. Anyways, I found a DOS utility called NTFSPRO that allowed us to see the partition. Seems he deleted his entire Windows folder. Somebody (he) just lost their admin rights to the machine! Silly him.

I suspect he tried to install Windows ME over the NT image.

 

[nEoTeChMaN]

MadRat, that is a comman practice to install NT again using a different directory name like c:\winnt32 instead of the default which is c:\winnt.

You'll get your data back this way.

What you did so far was more dangerous.

 

[MadRat]

Our problem was that we couldn't verify any drive integrity at all. Once we were able to verify the data we did reinstall NT and he's off and running again. Just no admin rights anymore.