I deleted a system file

[Guest]

I accidentally deleted something important- not sure what it was called, and
now I can't start windows, at the beginning of start up it says 'NT Detect
failed...' and re-starts the computer. What should I do, and will the stuff
on my hard drive be safe?

 

[peterk]

Booting directly from the Windows XP CD

1/ Place your Windows XP CD into your CD-ROM and Reboot your PC

2/ XP's setup program will automatically start and files will be loaded to
memory

3/When you reach the Welcome to Setup screen choose the Repair option by
pressing R

4/ This will open the Recovery Console

5/ The list of Windows installations will appear

6/ As you only have one installation on your PC you need to press the number
which is relevant to your installations location. This, obviously will
typically be 1

7/ You now need to enter your Administrator password to gain access. If you
are suing Windows XP Home the administrator password is blank by default so
simply press Enter

8/Now enter the following depending upon which file you need to replace. In
both instances replace the 'X' with the drive letter of your CD-ROM

a.. COPY X:\i386\NTLDR C\:
b.. COPY X:\i386\NTDETECT.COM C:\
11/ Finally remove your XP CD from the CD-ROM and then type Exit

12/ Reboot your machine to see if the the problem has been cured

if not post back

peterk