"ntoskrnl.exe" Missing or Corrupt... Please Reinstall

[chadwick6501]

I just did a fresh reformat and installation of windows 2000 pro SP3 and it allows me install everything and when i bootup for the first time i get this error message that says...

"Windows 2000 missing or corrupt: <windows 2000 root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe please reinstall a copy of the above file."

Huh? Its a brand new installation!? Ive done it before and never gotten this error before...

Ive done a number of different things to see if it'll work, but after three reformats and installations its still a no go...
1. underclocked my cpu back to orignal specs 3.0ghz back to 2.4ghz
2. changed harddisks
3. swapped ram from another computer
4. stood on my head hoping it would work

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*Update*
I just tryed to install Windows XP (which i would really hate to do) and i am getting this error message before it even loads...

"The file ini910u.sys is corrupted"

Then i get the Setup Failed. Press any key to restart your computer
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if anyone has any help on whats wrong or what i can do to fix this... i will gladly buy that man a pizza.

thanks
Chad

 

[Sianath]

Sounds like either bad media, or something funky with your cd-rom drive. Signs are pointing to a bad install.

Physical damage on the HD/Controller will do this as well, but if you have swapped disks then you can probably rule that one out.

If you want to test MBR/Boot sector corruption, create a NTFS boot disk (blank floppy, format it, copy on ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini) and try booting.

That will bypass the MBR/Boot Sector.

 

[chadwick6501]

Thanks, i appricate the help... the problem is ive tried it in both drives my cd burner and my dvd burner...

my next step is to just take the dang thing apart and put it all back together... hopefully it works

one more thing... if i leave the CD of windows 2000 inside the cdrom drive it will boot into windows without the error message... any reason why this may be?

thanks
Chad

 

[Smilin]

It sounds like the drive enumeration is changing.

Boot to recovery console and type "map arc"
Then make a ntfs boot floppy per Sianath and be sure the boot.ini file on your floppy matches the output from your "map arc"