Usually means ntdetect.com is missing or corrupt. Try booting the recovery
console and from a command prompt issue the command;
fixboot
To start the Recovery Console, start the computer from the Windows 2000
Setup CD or the Windows 2000 Setup floppy disks. If you do not have Setup
floppy disks and your computer cannot start from the Windows 2000 Setup CD,
use another Windows 2000-based computer to create the Setup floppy disks.
Press ENTER at the "Setup Notification" screen. Press R to repair a Windows
2000 installation, and then press C to use the Recovery Console. The
Recovery Console then prompts you for the administrator password. If you do
not have the correct password, Recovery Console does not allow access to the
computer. If an incorrect password is entered three times, the Recovery
Console quits and restarts the computer. Once the password has been
validated, you have full access to the Recovery Console, but limited access
to the hard disk. You can only access the following folders on your
computer: %systemroot% and %windir%
Or try creating a boot disk. For the floppy to successfully boot Windows
2000 the disk must contain the "NT" boot sector. Format a diskette (on an NT
machine, not a DOS/Win9x, so the NT boot sector gets written to the floppy),
and copy ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini to it; and possibly ntbootdd.sys.
Edit the boot.ini to give it a correct ARC path for the machine you wish to
boot.
--
Regards,
Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft MVP [Windows NT/2000 Operating Systems]
:
| My system crashed due to a power failure. I keep getting
| the message invalid boot NTDETECT failed. Can I reinstall
| windows without losing the data on the computer? What
| steps do I need to take to get things going again. Any
| help would be greatly appreciated
