Error

[rhona]

I'm probably posting this in the wrong place so I'll apologise in advance.

My Thinkpad won't start up. I get an error message saying 'Windows 2000 could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <windows2000 root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe. Please re-install a copy of the above file'.

Can anyone help me fix this? A guy on the Thinkpad helpline said I'd need to buy a disc costing £40...is there any way around this?

Help!

[egibbs]

notskrnl.exe is the Windows 2000 kernel - the core of the operating system. If that is missing or damaged you've got problems.

You may have had a disk failure, or the disk may just have become corrupted. If you can find someone with a Windows CD try booting the machine from the CD and selecting to enter the recovery console.

If you can get into the recovery console (which will look like a DOS prompt) run chkdsk c: /R. This will test the disk and attempt to repair any damaged files. Note that it may take a very long time to finish on a large disk with many errors - possibly a couple hours. If you are lucky it will get you back to being able to boot into Windows.

Once you get into Windows the first thing to do is back up all your data.

Good luck,

Ed Gibbs

[SeanM]

You may have a problem with your boot.ini file. Search support.microsoft.com for your error message.

[rhona]

Thanks for the suggestions. I hope I can fix it myself but I'm not too good with computer things.

I have another questions - is there any way the problem I'm having could've been caused by using a faulty AC adapter? I only ask because the problem started as soon as I plugged in a new adapter I bought. It's probably not connected, I just thought it was a bit of a coincidence and wanted to see if anyone knew any way it could be the cause.

[SeanM]

Doubtful.