"Missing" ntoskrnl.exe on NT 4.0

  • Thread starter Thread starter Carl Appellof
  • Start date Start date
C

Carl Appellof

I just installed some MS security patches for NT 4.0 on my home system.
Upon reboot, the osloader 4.01 stage complains it can't find
<systemroot>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe and fails to boot.

Luckily, I had another disk to boot from. I looked at the failing disk and
found all data was accessible and C:\WINNT\System32\ntosrknl.exe most
certainly DID exist. Copying a new version of that file to the failing disk
didn't fix the problem.

On Win2K, I could simply boot the installation CD and proceed with a Repair
installation. But what do I do on NT 4.0? (Of course, I was dumb enough
not to create any repair floppies.) Do I have any alternatives?

Thanks,
Carl
 
R. C. White said:
Hi, Carl.

This often means that ntldr and ntdetect.com are looking in the wrong place
for ntoskrnl.exe. They find SOMETHING, but they don't recognize it so they
fail with that message. There are two probable causes. Either C:\boot.ini
has been edited to point to the wrong location, or the proper location now
has a different address.
....
If that's not the solution, Google finds over 200 KB articles when searching
for "ntoskrnl.exe" at support.microsoft.com. Maybe this one will help:
Err Msg: Windows NT Could Not Start...Ntoskrnl.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=124550
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips. My boot.ini file is just fine, but I think the last
support article you pointed me to holds the key. I'll bet my new updated
copy of ntoskrnl.exe has been placed on my 9GB partition somewhere above NT
4.0's limit of 7.8GB. Sad to say, the only solution proposed by Microsoft
is to repartition the disk so the file can be located :-(

Carl
 
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