Well I've had some success, I took my Maxtor out and booted off the Seagate, the Ram is just fine. I had to reinstall everything but it's working... judging by my experience it was a Hard Drive failure causing it.
I've put the Maxtor back as a secondary drive since reinstalling Windows on the Seagate and as soon as I do the computer stops responding.
I've started and restarted about 50 times since getting it going and had no problems.
I would suspect it's due to Hard Drive failure of some type, I hope this information can be of some use to someone else experiencing this problem.

system32/drivers/ntfs.sys Problem????

The solution. (At least this worked for me.)

The only upgrade I had on my laptop was a 256MB DDR Ram Chip. I removed it, re-installed the OS and hey presto, it works.

although all the memory tests were positive and I had no reports that there was a problem, there was. The chip had been working for 8 months and has given up. It might be worth trying, you never know.

Good Luck

1. Use the Windows XP startup disks or the Windows XP CD to restart your computer.
2. When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to select the To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R option.
3. Type the number of the Windows installation that you want to access from the Recovery Console, and then press ENTER.
4. Type the administrator password when you are prompted, and then press ENTER. If no administrator password exists, just press ENTER.
5. At the command prompt, type the following commands (press ENTER after each command):
cd \windows\system32\drivers

ren ntfs.sys ntfs.old
Note This step renames the corrupted Ntfs.sys file to Ntfs.old. If the Ntfs.sys file is not found, the file is missing.
6. At the command prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER:
copy cd:\i386\ntfs.sys drive:\windows\system32\drivers
Where cd is the drive letter for the CD-ROM drive that contains the Windows XP CD, and drive is the drive where you installed Windows XP.
7. Remove the Windows XP CD from your CD-ROM drive, type quit at a command prompt, and then press ENTER to quit the Recovery Console.
8. Restart the computer.

support.microsoft.com
is where I got it

Thanks Zebovi40, I hope someone will find the ren command string helpful, My OS recovery disks were from a pre-installed windows application and the problem I had was that there was no option to select or access r for sys repair, the only choice I had was Complete re-install ghost.exe Y or N.
Y just re-installed the OS and N gave a command prompt for A:\ . ren strings were a bad command entry and C:\ did not exist. I am pleased to say that my laptop is now working perfectly, I replaced a 256mb ram chip for £21 and the problem just went away. It seems that the HDD drive was having problems identifying the chip and gave the error report that the drive might be faulty. Anyone with system32/drivers/ntfs.sys problems should first check their ram even if it appears nothing is wrong. hopefully, if it works there will be no need to re-install and lose data. This worked for me, I hope it will work for someone else. Thanks for the post Zebovi40, I have copied it onto a word doc, it may yet prove helpful in the future. Cheers.

I too have been getting this same error. Unfortunatly, all the solutions people have posted have yet to work for me, short of reformating of course, which currently is not a feasible option in my particular case. I should clarify something tho. I only get this error when I put in my new RAM (1Gig DDR 3200) by itself, when I use my old RAM (512 MB DDR 2100) the computer works perfectly, I even tried to put both sticks in, and it worked fine, but my problem is that the newer stick becomes obsolete, because it downgrades to the lower speed. Also, my motherboard is compatible with my new ram, and I have tried putting in a different RAM slot each time too. So my questiom is, since my computer recognizes and works with the new ram and old ram combined, then that mean the new stick cannot be faulty, right? And is there anything else I can do besides reformating?

Thanks, Derek

You might have a problem using a 2100 chip with a 3200 chip. they are not compatible with each other.
the clock speed (CL.) on the new chip is not compatible with the old one. (or the mobo.) take both chips to your supplier and see if they will replace your 1gig chip

I have the same problem. I have a laptop Gateway Solo 5300. If it's a memory problem, how do I remove and put back in my memory on a laptop. I havent added any addition memory, nor have I made changes to my laptop. Gateway support said to have my HD saved at Best Buy and then reinstall my OS, which is Windows XP. I'll rip my computer apart if I have to, but I'd rather not.

Any suggestions or answers?

ok i just had the same problem as evryone else. I took my computer to my friend's shop. we fixed it by switching the slots of my ram chips. He said that this error is usualy caused by electricity or static geting where it is not suposto be most commonly ram. so to fix it switch your ram. also you can try un pluging then re pluging in stuff like your video card, or sound card wich also can cause this.
It dosent sound like this should fix it, I know but trust me it works!!!!!!!!!!

I fixed my problem!

But a note to all of you who may experience this problem...you do not need to erase anything! Here I erased my entire hd and all I really had to do was get new ram. darn it! now...back to reinstalling EVERYTHING.

Been there done that rebooted and got same response, i also verified the files had been copied.

my problem started after i had installed norton systemworks premier 2006. i rebooted and got systemroot\system missing or corupt fixed that then got ntoskrnl.exe missing or corrupt fixed that then got smss.exe missing or corrupt then i kinda started pulling my hair out then got round to fixing that and now ive got ntfs.sys problem copied from xp cd and its still coming up so im looking round to see if i can dl it from somewhere.