Nerelda Posted December 3, 2005 Report Share Posted December 3, 2005 Hi everyone! It's been really busy for me, but right now I'm trying to work on my mother's laptop that she uses for school and of course I came to the best place for help. Ok, so basics of the issue. Her laptop (running windows xp) would suddenly not boot up. It would get to the windows loading screen and just stay there. I'm sure she's got all kinds of crapware on it, so I decided a fresh windows install would be best in this case.So....I tried a reinstall, but didnt' get far. I was able to get to where it would format the drive, but it would just stay there at 0%. So after about an hour of sitting there, I tried the NTFS quick format option. That went through fine and even seemed to have success with the installation...until it rebooted and came up with the issue of "missing or corrupt ntoskrnl.exe file". I went through instructions on the windows site about reinstalling that file through the recovery console. That got me nowhere. I kept getting the error message that the file or directory did not exist.I have also run chkdsk to try and find any problems with the HD but for some reason, it kept telling me something about not being able to run? Anyway....about an hour later (just now) tried checkdisk /p and it was able to run this time. It said some errors were found, so I hope it also fixed them. Rebooted, and now I'm still getting that "missing or corrupt ntoskrnl.exe file" error.Since chkdsk was able to run successfully again, should I go ahead and try to reinstall windows through the full format option and hope that it goes through (even though 3 attempts of it so far have not)? Or do you havfe any other suggestions? Thanks so much! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JSKY Posted December 3, 2005 Report Share Posted December 3, 2005 Are you using an WindowsXP CD or a system recovery CD or restore CD? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Nerelda Posted December 3, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 3, 2005 My appologies. This is a Dell Inspiron 2650.I am using the Windows Installation CD that came with the laptop. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JSKY Posted December 3, 2005 Report Share Posted December 3, 2005 (edited) Sounds like a corrupt boot.ini file. Which is also affecting the loading of your disk.Can you get anywhere with booting off the XP CD? Try doing a repair install. There are two types of repair on XP. When you boot with the XP disk. You will come to the first part that asks if you want to install or do a repair. This first repair is a command prompt type for a specific repair. AT THIS POINT! If you click on install XP instead, you will see XP load files as it get ready to install the OS. When it gets done loading files, you will again be asked to install XP or to repair your current OS. At this second repair option, click to repair and sit back. XP will go through your whole system searching and repairing parts that have been changed or need to be replaced.Or, if that doesn't work. You might try using a Win98 Bootdisk to wipe the drive clean. And then reinstall XP on an empty drive. You can get one here at BootDisk.comUse the fdisk utilitie. Edited December 3, 2005 by JSKY Quote Link to post Share on other sites
jdlech Posted December 3, 2005 Report Share Posted December 3, 2005 (edited) Let me make sure I have this straight. You had trouble formatting the drive. But once you succeeded and installed windows clean, the ntoskrnl.exe file came up corrupt on the first boot.This sounds to me like a hardware problem. Probaby the hard drive and possibly the controller.If you have problems doing a repair install and with clean installing with another (non ntfs) version of windows, then you should start looking at replacing the drive.Hope I helped. Edited December 3, 2005 by jdlech Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Nerelda Posted December 3, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 3, 2005 Ok, went through the repair options. I only had the first one for some reason. I didn't have the second repair option. Just ran the fdisk util, and right now, I'm getting ready to try to install windows again. Will give you an update when I know what's going on. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Nerelda Posted December 3, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 3, 2005 Yes, I already thought it was a hardware issue. I was just hoping that maybe someone might have thought of something that might get it going without that. The laptop is about 4 years old and was bought off ebay. Unfortunately, since she does not have the money to replace it or anything. The last option is to reformat MY laptop and let her borrow it for school. It's not really what I want to do, but it's all that can be done. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Nerelda Posted December 3, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 3, 2005 Ok, I got through the format this time and windows ALMOST boots up. It gets past the screen it couldn't, but stops when the slashed line at the bottom of the screen is loading, then I get this error message:"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEMYou can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup using the original Setup CD-ROM. Select "r" at the first screen to repair" Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JSKY Posted December 5, 2005 Report Share Posted December 5, 2005 Have you had any success with the reformat of your Laptop Nerelda? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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