Reinstallation

[Rich Grandzol]

My laptop will not boot up; it stops saying that
the "ntoskrnl.exe" file is corrupt or missing. If I
reinstall Windows-XP, will it reformat the disk? I'e got
a lot if software I'd rather no re-install.

 

[John Barnett - MVP]

Visit my web site www.freelanceit.glowinternet.com
Click on the Win XP Faq button and look down the list for How Do I rectify a
missing or corrupt ntoskrnl. You will need your Windows XP CD.
If you simply reinstall you will loose *all* of your data, including the
files you so desperately need to keep. An alternative is to use the Repair
option. But try the method i have suggested first.
Incidentally if you do need to use repair you should be aware that there are
two instances of repair during the initital install of xp. The first mention
of Repair brings up the Recocery Console. Ignore this one and continue to
let setup proceed (please read the screen details carefully) until you see
another repair option. It is this second option you want. This will
over-write all xp files on your pc leaving your valuable data untouched. It
only repairs the xp files. This is how it is supposed to work, but never
having used it - i prefer a complete clean install - i cannot confirm it

 

[Steve Marshall]

Just did that exact process yesterday and it works great - all settings
left intact and XP files restored. Problems fixed.

Maybe you can help me with another problem that seems to be a separate
problem that I thought was related to the freezing desktop (which is now
fixed).

On a cold boot, I get to the black screen with the XP Professional
banner and the blue dashed line crawler underneath and it freezes the
boot process. I power off and either one or two more repeats of that
process and it finally boots successfully to the desktop.

I have reviewed the Event Viewer for the exact time and this seems to be
happening before that process loads since everything is going according
to plan there with no warnings, errors, etc.

Just installed a new mobo recently (GA-8S648-L) with new DDR-400 RAM but
the machine ran fine for several days burning in new devices. It was
only after I started adding devices (on USB Hub) that the above started
happening.

My next step is to unplug USB devices and see if that cures it - it
reboots fine, BTW; only on a cold boot.

Steve

 

[John Barnett - MVP]

I think you have answered your own question there steve. The first thing you
must always ask yourself is 'What's changed' The answer? Everything was
working fine until you added the USB hub. First remove the usb hub
completely and see if everything works. If it does then readd the hub and
insert each usb device seperately rebbooting after each addition. Hopefully
you should locate the problem. It may simply be a driver of one of the usb
devices. But all you can do at present is try to eliminate the problem by
trial and error.