WAY bad windows startup error, ntfs.sys file corruption

Spike

Diamond Member
Aug 27, 2001
6,770
1
81
ok, here is the scoop... I run a pc with windows XP pro sp1 as the OS. Tonight I was playing a game (morrowind) and then paused it and was away for 30 or so min. When I came back the computer was black screen saying a few lines. Basically it said that windows could not start up due to a missing or corrupt ntfs.sys file. it then instructed me to put in the startup cd and run recovery from there.

Ok, so I was like "WTF!?!?" and resarted the machine and booted from my winxp disc. Well, it started to install the files neccessary to run setup and crashed when it was installing the kernal debugger. It said cannot continue, setup must exit. error code 4. So I reset it. After doing this about a dozen time it finally went through. I was able to press the "r" button to run recovery console and copy over a new copy of ntfs.sys to my windows drive as instructed on a help site. This worked and windows rebooted

I started playing morrowind again (after copying important files over to my second hard drive, just in case) the computer then randomly reboot again. At startup it was the same thing as before, missing or corrupt ntfs.sys So after taking the same steps as before and running the cd like 30 times, I was able to get windows to start twice. Once without running the cd (I forgot to hit a key when the prompt asked if I wanted to boot from CD) and it promplty crashed right when windows was fully running again. The second time it got through the cd setup, I copied the new ntfs over again, resarted, and it crashed just as windows was finished loading up.

My question is this, what do I do? Can I salvage this install of windows? If not, can I run a boot disk and get whatever files I need to my second hard drive and then just reinstall? One concern I have is a virus. I run macafee professional 7.0 virus thing (latest dat's) so it catches the normal bugs, but what about special bugs? Does anyone know of a virus that does this? I guess the other possibility is a busted hard drive. it is a 4-year old western digital WD400BB drive (40 GB), but somehow I doubt this to be the case.

I only wonder because then I have infected all my backup files on the second hard drive. I am almost convinced I just need to reinstall after getting what I need off the old drive, but I want to save this for a last resort. Thanks for any help you guys can offer.

-Spike

P.S. I will be slow responding to this thread due to the amount of time I have to be at work, so be patient if you ask me for more information. Thanks again
 

Gravity

Diamond Member
Mar 21, 2003
5,685
0
0
Well, you might have a boot sector virus. One of those nasty buggers was causing spontaneous reboots this year. Is your cpu overheating? That's another cause of critical failures. You are using a drive by WD that is 4 years old. Feeling lucky are we? WD drives come and go and if your's is 4 years old you should be planning on replacing it soon.

Otherwise, you should copy any critical files to a new drive and then format that one and use it for storage. I recently had to do that and I just did a clean install to the new drive then put the old one on as a slave and then got all the data I needed.

Hope it works out for you :)
 

Spike

Diamond Member
Aug 27, 2001
6,770
1
81
thanks for the reply. Couple of questions... If I had a boot sector virus, would it stay in the boot sector? Would all the other files I had and copied over (games, music, and such) be ok on my other drive?

also, is 4 years usually the mean life for a drive? That seems kinda short to me.

As for overheating, not a prot. my cpu runs hot, but never above 44ish. Anyway, thanks for the reply and I appreciate it and any other suggestions you guys have

-spike

UPDATE** Ok, I got the computer running for the last 20 or so min. I have no idea if it is going to crash again but I am hopeing not. What I did was first unplug my main C drive and the windows cd started up fine instead of giving me the before mentioned error. so, I unplugged my DVD drive and the D drive and plugged back in the C drive and windows started up just fine. I am currently copying files away from it to my laptop just in case it crashes. I hope if it's a virus it stays in the boot files. Anyway, I am skeptical as it ran for 40ish min last night before crashing and giving me the corrupted ntfs.sys warning.

I was wondering if it could be a powersupply issue? I have not changed anything from before, but maybe the psu just decided to go bad on me. It is a nice enermax 350, but even they can die. Can a bad psu cause a corrupted ntfs.sys warning? I thought the machine would just randomly reboot or not post but not actually corrupt. anyway, as always your help is appreciated
 

Spike

Diamond Member
Aug 27, 2001
6,770
1
81
so.... I got it to run stable when I unplugged my other hard drive, though I have not had it up for very long so I have no idea if it is going to stay running or not. I replaced the ide cable and restarted with both drives and it seems to be working, so this is a good sign. more later

-spike

p.s. any advice would still be appreciated