windows xp will not bootup all of a sudden: "windows could not start because the following file is m

[haze]

hello,

my winxp won't bootup. the message i receive is "Windows could not
start because the following file is missing or corrupt
system32\drivers\ntfs.sys". nothing out of the ordinary was done when
the machine was last successfully booted up except to install the
windows auto-updates but i cannot recall which one's to be more
specific.

i have tried the following:
1)i booted the machine with my xp cd but i don't get the option to
select R on the welcome to setup screen. There is however the option to
press F2 for the auto recovery but this prompts me to "insert windows
automated system recovery disk into floppy drive - i don't have that.
when i let the cd to continue without selecting any option, another
message appears "file setupdd.sys could not be loaded error code ix 7".


2) I also tried booting with a bootable disk and then trying to get to
my two hard drives c: and D: but when i try to get to these drives, i
get the message 'invalid drive specification". I thought if i could get
to the drive i could replace the ntfs.sys file on the hard drive with
that on the xp cd.

3) I even try to boot the machine in the Safe Mode but the message
above of the ntfs file is missing or corrupt comes up.

the important thing for me is to recover my data on both those hard
drives. any suggestion on how to repair this problem or at least how i
can recover data on both hard drives? any advise will surely help.


thanks,
haze

 

[Maurice N ~ MVP]

Do you have a retail or full OEM CD of Windows XP? and not just a System Recovery CD?

Configure your computer to start from the CD-ROM drive. You do that from the pc BIOS setup screen. You specify CDROM as the first drive to boot from.

Insert your Windows XP CD into your CD-ROM drive, and then restart your pc.

When the "Press any key to boot from CD" message is displayed on your
screen, press a key to boot pc from the XP CD.

When you see the following message displayed on the Welcome to Setup screen,
press ENTER:
To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.

At this point an option to press R to enter the Recovery Console is displayed. Select this option.

NTFS.SYS needs to be at %windir%\system32\drivers [where %windir% = C:\windows or C:\WINNT ]

You should be able to find NTFS.SYS at %windir%\ServicePackFiles\i386

You can COPY from the \i386 folder to the \system32\drivers folder .... while in the Recovery Console

COPY C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles\I3­86\NTFS.SYS C:\Windows\System32\drivers

{ change Windows to WINNT if your Windows folder is WINNT }

 

[Rich Barry]

You will find a lot of info here
http://www.gidforums.com/t-748.html