Dsmith?

Where did u go? I am waiting for your reply before I reformat...

Sorry crassbones. I have been a bit lax lately I think that Hood may be correct and it sounds like he has more experience with this than I.

A couple of things you could try but no guarantees.

1. knoppix - Perhaps (but unlikely if what Hood says is true) you could recover your data. Then reformat and install windows. Reinstalling software is really quite easy. It is only the data that is irreplaceable. In fact, I am one of those "geeks" that redoes my computer about once a year.
2. This is very scary advice. Rewriting your partition table does not erase your data as long as you keep the exact same partitions. Perhaps your partition table is flubbed up and by running fdisk it will recreate your table and you may have access to all your data. This would be a last resort besides the reformatting though.
   
   True story: About 10 years ago during a server upgrade, I accidentally repartitioned a data drive with a complete different partition table. I about left for Mexico when I realized what I had done. The data on this disk measured in manhours would have been in the millions. I had not formatted it yet though and I went in and put on the exact partition table as before and viola, all my data was there.
   
   Since then, I have been so much more careful with my data, several backups off-site, multiple hard drive copies when upgrading,etc.

Anyway I wish I had a sure fire solution, but I think Hood is correct. I would appreciate it if you let us know how this turns out. Good luck!

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This is funny....
Just before I was gonna repartition...I tried the recovery console once more...
And NOW...it is giving me the option to select an operating system (1: C:\WINDOWS)....
So I selected it...entered the password...and now have access to my C drive.

Then i renamed the ntfs.sys file and copied a new one from the setup CD-rom.
I was so excited to reboot and have my machine working agian....but

The same problem happens....it still stops at bootup and says corrupt or missing ntfs.sys...

Any new suggestions dsmith? or should I try to repartition?
Is it possible just to reformat the c drive? becuase I already have my drive split into 2 logical drives...and I dont' want to loose the stuff on the other logical drive (drive E)...by repartitioning...wont' i lose that drive as well???

Interesting. It still appears that something serious is amiss though if this does not work. Is all of your data on drive E? If so you should probably just reinstall Windows on drive C. As for repartitioning, while somewhat dangerous, if you don't change your E partition and just rewrite the partition table, it will fix it if there is an error there.

However, I think you should try to reinstall windows first (if you have easily seperated your data from o/s). I think it will take less time than trying to fix this, plus you will get better results. If you have problems installing, then you need to think about using the fdisk for partitioning.

Also, if you need to get data off the disk, I would recommend knoppix before you do any of this.

__________________
The best damn Sports Blog period.

Thank you Hood and dsmith for taking the time to answer my questions!

My problem is finally solved...people who are reading this to solve their problem...I'm so sorry...because this is such a pain in the @#%!!!

After copying over the ntfs.sys file...this STILL didn't solve my problem...
Upon bootup..it still said ntfs.sys is corrupt....
So now it is time to reinstall windows over your previous installation...
This will not overwrite your documents and files (only windows system files).
Note: You WILL need your CD key.

Solution:
1. Reboot with Setup CD-ROM
2. At blue screen...click ENTER to install Windows XP
3. Windows Setup will find a previous installion...click r to repair this installaiton
4. Setup begins deleting system files and then begins copying new files from CD
5. Then you have to go through the whole stupid windows installation process...(ie..copying device drivers, keyboard and laguage settings..etc)

Note: During this installation...I got another error window message:
unregmp2.exe - Entry Point not Found
To fix this problem:
- press Shift+F10
- type taskmgr.exe and press ENTER from the command line
- task manager will open and then select processes tab
- select unregmp2.exe and end it
- click appilcations tab
- end task on the error window (unregmp2.exe)
- close the task manager
- type EXIT and press ENTER at the command line
- the setup will now continue...

6. Enter your CD key
7. Reboot
8. My computer is back!!! No files are lost!

This was such a pain to fix but it is finally done!!!
I hope this helps all others who have this problem!

GOOD LUCK!!!

Thank you crassbones for posting back with this reply. I am sure that others with this problem will be grateful. Glad to hear everything worked out for you okay!

__________________
The best damn Sports Blog period.

FYI: I ran into the same issue today with a Dell laptop, and I almost re-installed Windows XP until I thought about using chkdsk /r. I ran this twice from the recovery prompt and all was fixed. It's amazing how you can dig deep into your old DOS utilities and find some useful tools.

Cthoms

how do you do your step 4?

4. Setup begins deleting system files and then begins copying new files from CD

thanks

Hi there to everybody on these forums

Firstly, a big thanks, as this thread has not fixed my problem, but definitely gav eme more ideas to try. I got the same dreaded NTFS error. PANIC!! But since panicing didn't help, I thought it was a temp thing. I tested the Seagate drive in my girlfriend's PC (As a slave drive) and everything seemed 100%, scandisk and chkdsk /f didn't pick up any errors. So I investigated further.

I tried the repair console, but to no avail, as I got the BSOD again, with a message re the corrupt of missing ntfs.sys.

I formatted my drive (The C:\ partition of it) and tried to re-install XP on the partition, using is as the only drive in my girlfriend's PC. All went well, managed to re-install it, but it still gave me the error and rebooted when I took it back to my machine. I knew the drive was Ok, so I hit trusty google, and came upon this page.

I hadn't changed the internals of my PC (Cept for adding another drive (1 year ago) and upgrading the gfx card (6 months ago) so it was strange that this error happened now. I removed everything non-essential to my PC running (Sound card, Wireless card, extra drive, CD-RW, and DVD-RW) and founf that XP booted happily. I then proceeded to get XP happy, and slowly shut down, added another device, and rebooted. everything was going well, until I plugged in my other drive (Surprise surprise it's a MAXTOR 80Gb drive) and the ntfs reared its ugly head again. However, the maxtor drive ISN'T a boot drive. it (was) my information store). I've tried plugging the maxtor drive into my girlfriend's PC, and Disk Manager registers it as a Foreign Drive. I tried to import it, but now it gives the same error.

So I've given up on that drive, said that if it's buggered, so be it, I've jus tlost everything, whatever. But now my XP has started reboting itself randomly, 5 mins after booting up?? What's up with that?

I was so close to throwing my PC out last night at 2am, I'm tired of it not working.

I guess, what I'm asking is:
a) Why is my PC rebooting 5 mins after loading windows (and when rebooted, giving me a "Windows recovered from a serious error" messagebox)
b) Is my Maxtor drive finished, or can I get the info on it off it?
c) Should I keep trying, or should I just buy a new PC (I wanted to upgrade anyways)

My Pc Specs are:
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-8ITX
CPU: Intel P4 1.6Ghz
RAM: 1Gb RDRAM (PC 800 ECC Samsung)
HDD: 60GB Seagate (5GB C:\. 55GB D:\)
80Gb Maxtor (E:\)
GFX: PixelView NVidia GeForce 5900XT
Samsung CD-Rom RW
BenQ DVD +/- R/RW DL

I was debating upgrading to an AMD 939 board, Venice 3500, newer gfx etc, should I just do this (Altho I'm not keen to spend the money)

*UPDATE*

Just pulled out an old 8Gb drive, that I am using for my Windows XP disk only. I'm trying desperately to get information off my 60Gb Maxtor drive, but windows keeps rebooting when I install the drive, or if I go to administrative tools.

Any thoughts/hints/ideas as to what's going on?