NTOSKRNL.EXE corrupt or missing

Running Win2000, when machine died. Rebooted, and got error message saying that NTOSKRNL.EXE is corupt or missing.

Search of MS site led to discussion of using the ERD. So, I looked in my Dell box, and found no ERD, but I did find a disk for WinXP.

Turns out that, 1. I bought the computer 3 months ago with Win2000 installed (work application).
2. Dell doesn't ship Win2000 boot disks, but does ship a disk for you to upgrade to XP

Is there a way to get a generic boot disc for Win 2000? Dell's suggestion was to upgrade to XP.


Thanks.

 

If you have a 2K install CD, you can use it to create a set of startup disks as you would need to install the OS.

If you can set the PC to boot from a CD (2K & XP install CDs are bootable) your best option if you want to retain 2K is to do that and go into the recovery console and run the fixboot command. There may be more wrong than the one missing file and the RC fixboot may be a painless way to get things running again.

If you prefer to move to XP, again you'll need the PC to boot from CD as BIOS option #1 and then upgrade to XP as long as you have XP-pro. 2K sees XP-home as a downgrade and won't allow it.

 

Ultimately, I had to reinstall, so I went to XP Pro.