NTFS.sys missing or corrupt ...

[Looneycooney]

hello,
my problem is one with a long story behind it ..
first i had trouble joining online-games ..my pc conststantly hung as soom as i spawned
didn't matter what game ..
i formatted thinking that something was wrong with my windows ..
but this didn't help , it still had the same problem .
so i though , hhmm maybe a xp-pro can do this ...WRONG!
after repartitioning and reformatting i installed this xp-pro , but it hung as soon as it loads windows
so at the screen : " starting windows ...."
so i again tried a repartitioning and reformatting ..again installing Windows 2000
this time i again had trouble with online gaming ...
so i took the pc to a friend and we monitored it for few days on LAN...
nothing went wrong just until the last day , it gave a blue screen with nothing in it
reboot ...and it was gone
after all this i took it back home to test it ..
it ran fine ( although this time i didn't try online gaming) , until ..
today i got an error message at start up :
in the sceen : "starting windows..."
suddenly came some other info beneath that :
windows 2000 could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt :
\WINNT\system 32 \drivers\NTFS.sys
you can attempt to repair this file by starting windows 2000 setup using original floppy disk or cdrom .
select 'r' at first screen to start repair


what exactly went wrong ?? will a 4th format help ??? or is it maybe the hd??
i can try other devices ..didn't do that yet ..i have every spare part so

[LiVeWiRe]

Looneycooney,

Before trying another format, etc. I would do what the software suggested: "you can attempt to repair this file by starting windows 2000 setup using original floppy disk or cdrom .select 'r' at first screen to start repair"

Here's a link to some detailed instructions for this process:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;822800

Hope that helps,
-LW

[grasshopperbe]

Looney called me on the phone about an hour ago that his pc wont boot into windows anymore. according to what he told me, the background loads, but the icons and taskbar wont load (i seem to remember this is explorer.exe not loading? ) .He can't do anything for the rest but reboot .
He's gone to a shop where he used to work to get his hd tested to see what that does (they have serious equipment)

LiVeWiRe, I read trough the link you provided, it says there this only happens with xp, but looney runs 2000, and that this is only supposed to happen after a fat32 -> ntfs conversion. This has never been done on looney's pc as far as i can recall. I searched for ntfs.sys on that page, there are lots of links, i am still reading trough them.

This is a pretty weird case. i had the pc over here a couple of days, i tested gaming on lan, kept it on for hours an no problems, except for 1 bluescreen the last day (no error message) as looney noted. Could his hd be dying ? it is a fairly new maxtor 80GB.
Maybe it's far- fetched, but could this be a virus or worm?

[LiVeWiRe]

Originally posted by grasshopperbe LiVeWiRe, I read trough the link you provided, it says there this only happens with xp, but looney runs 2000, and that this is only supposed to happen after a fat32 -> ntfs conversion. This has never been done on looney's pc as far as i can recall. I searched for ntfs.sys on that page, there are lots of links, i am still reading trough them.

Sorry about that grasshopperbe and Looney...I should have read his steps at trying to resolve the issue more carefully.
Did he try the repair from the Windows 2000 CD as the software prompted/suggested?

-LW

[DragonNOA1]

Have you ran any memory tests?

[grasshopperbe]

Looney brought his pc's over to my place this evening. i installed everything needed on his older pc to get him online again, and i've got the problematic one over here.

I cannot try the repair installation anymore, the guys in the shop where he wanted to test his hd just gave him a new one. i would have liked to see what this would have done though. I remember having tried a repair installation for another problem some time ago, but it asked for certain windows diskettes at a certain point, which i didnt have (or couldnt find)


Is there any memory testing software or so that you would advise?

any ideas on what i should check furthermore are welcome, i really cant seem to find the origin of these problems

[Looneycooney]

hhmmm well thanks for the good replies ..
i indeed did not had the chance to do a repair , but when he offered me a complte new one i couldn't resist ...
after all the older one just had 3 formats :s
also ..i do have a strong feeling there was something wrong with the hd ...
the guy in the shop who i know has a real good knowledge of these things thought the hd may possess bad clusters , just for the fact that none of the 3 formats worked..he even implied that the bad clusters would be at the beginning of the hd and that is why it would crash constantly or act very weird..also the fact it all started after it's very first format ...the hd was like 9 months old
although he was'nt that sure also ..it could..but it also may not be ...
i'll keep u guys in notice when we install the new hd ...it surely still can be something else ..

and indeed ..some good memory-test programs are welcome

[glc]

http://www.memtest.org/