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wbiazzo - Jun 18, 2005 - 12:49 AM
Post subject: XP File Corruption downs laptop, How to fix?

Attempting to speed a slowing Toshiba Satellite laptop with XP Home OS, the computer refuses to boot due to “missing or corrupt ntoskrnl” file. XP disk did not come with the system, but I wasn’t worried because I have the recovery disk! The disk gives me two options A) do nothing B) erase and reformat the hard drive. And by the way, much of the software that came w/ your machine will go bye-bye along with your data. Oh, please back up your hard drive before attempting to restore XP. Being soft in the head my last data backup was three and one-half weeks ago, and I never thought to back up the optional software.

XP disks didn’t come with the computer. There is no floppy, only a CD burner/DVD player. Toshiba thoughtfully suggests I buy a retail version of XP at a local shop if the recovery disk doesn’t work.

I have the following resources:
Dying Toshiba laptop, Working HP desk top, also running XP Home, and also w/o XP disks. Copy of PE builder v3.1.3, Nero copy program, spare 160 gig hard drive, several smaller hard drives, CD and DVD burner, and dialup internet connection. Several copies of non XP OS such as NT, Win3.1, DOS 6.0 etc with boot floppies

My first thought was to make a BARTPE CD to boot the laptop, and swap a copy of the corrupted file from the desktop into the specified location on the laptop. The PE Builder balked, as the desktop didn’t have SP1. I attempted to install SP1a from the Microsoft site, tried again, and PE Builder balked again due to missing ntdll.dll file. I know this file is notorious for a security flaw, and am not sure if it was altered or removed as part of the security upgrades of the Service Pak 1. I can find no copy of this file anywhere on my desktop.

Muttering a curse on Bill Gates to the 7th generation of his descendents, I am ready to try slaving the laptop disk drive into the desktop to boot it, and doing a file copy of ntoskrnl in this manner, but am worried about incompatible voltages, power supply miss-matches, etc. which would cook the lap top drive. Or I can try to locate the missing ntdll.dll on the net, to fire up the BARTPE CD project again.

I can’t believe a simple file copy wouldn’t fix this thing w/o having to nuke and pave the HD. I also don’t want to futz with registration hassles due to reinstallation. Any suggestions?

hubtones - Jun 18, 2005 - 02:18 AM
Post subject: Re: XP File Corruption downs laptop, How to fix?

wbiazzo wrote:

Muttering a curse on Bill Gates to the 7th generation of his descendents, I am ready to try slaving the laptop disk drive into the desktop to boot it, and doing a file copy of ntoskrnl in this manner, but am worried about incompatible voltages, power supply miss-matches, etc. which would cook the lap top drive. Or I can try to locate the missing ntdll.dll on the net, to fire up the BARTPE CD project again.

I can’t believe a simple file copy wouldn’t fix this thing w/o having to nuke and pave the HD. I also don’t want to futz with registration hassles due to reinstallation. Any suggestions?

First, Laptop drives can be used in a desktop computer, usually the difficult part is finding the hardware adapter that lets the drive get screwed in. The adapters are sold and laptop drives are normal IDE drives, they're just smaller.

Just as a comment, you might want to clone your entire laptop drive onto your desktop drive so that you have a backup, then copy over the data you apparently want to save after reinstallation. You likely have the ability to install the programs and you then could copy over the data files after reinstallation. I have several sarcastic remarks about recovery disks, but I'll hold them, they do give you a licensed version of windows, just not one that you can recover in your circumstances.

K9MkII - Jun 18, 2005 - 02:21 AM
Post subject:

Assuming you have the 'problem' described in KB entry 314477 you may be able to correct it by fixing the boot.ini file.

The tricky bit here is getting to a point where you can edit the file. You should be able to use a bootable CD, either one of the DOS-based ones or Linux on a CD variants (such as Knoppix). If the boot partition is formatted as NTFS you have a larger problem, DOS is not able to work with NTFS and although some of the Linux versions can read NTFS, writing to an NTFS disk is generally not supported.

Bill

hubtones - Jun 18, 2005 - 02:28 AM
Post subject:

K9MkII wrote:

. If the boot partition is formatted as NTFS you have a larger problem, DOS is not able to work with NTFS and although some of the Linux versions can read NTFS, writing to an NTFS disk is generally not supported.

Several of the debian based CD distributions use captive-ntfs to safely read and write NTFS partitions. Captive-NTFS does work but requires several files from Windows to work properly. I know that Knoppix in particular was experimenting with captive-ntfs but I haven't burned a recent ISO to play with. It's not as much fun to use Knoppix when you're already using Linux.

Klaatu - Jun 18, 2005 - 04:28 AM
Post subject:

As a pedestrian solution:

why don't you run a live CD version of linux, copy all your data files to a cd or dvd or email them to yourself; then restore your old backup? You will have the latest data saved and all you might lose are programs installed in the last few months.

The latest version of knoppix works nicely with usb type drives. I have a SD card from my camera plugged into a usb card reader. It is where I keep a persistent home directory. It might be a pain in the rear to save all your data on multiple SD or CF cards, but at least you can get your stuff back.

wbiazzo - Jun 18, 2005 - 06:25 PM
Post subject: Update: XP File Corruption downs laptop, How to fix?

Gentleman:

A fast update:

First, thank you all for excellent suggestions! I am trying to implement several on parallel tracks, and seem to be stalled at about 95% of the way there.

I am looking for an adapter to allow slaving the laptop drive to the desktop, and am hoping to find this in a local CompUSA. Tried Radio Shack and several other electronics places with no luck. I hate to think such an inelegant solution will win.

Tried building a boot CD with PE Builder. Found good instructions and FOUR versions of ntsll.dll of the wrong (too early), version. Been skulking the MS Knowledge Base for ways to get a newer version.

My problem IS as in KB entry 314477, and once I can get the laptop booted to the point I can doctor the boot.ini file, I can try the fix.

Finally, I was able to root around in the disks that come with my subscriptions, and locate a Knoppix ISO. The good news is that I was able to burn a CD and boot the laptop! I can actually get to the GUI, see my data, and open some files, and find the extra junk (external HD, etc) I hang off the laptop, BUT I CANNOT DO FILE TRANFERS! I have Knoppix 3.7, which is supposed run from the CD, so you don’t need to futz with the hard drive. I can’t figure out if I’m doing something wrong, or if the distro is gimmicked to prevent a Newbie from mucking up the HD, and hence is useless for what I need to do. So near!…

Any suggestions?

ntwrklarry - Jun 18, 2005 - 09:11 PM
Post subject: RE: Update: XP File Corruption downs laptop, How to fix?

Fat32 or NTFS?

Go to pricewatch.com and type in "laptop hard drive adapter" into the search field.

Can you boot to the recovery CD and choose the Recovery option?

wbiazzo - Jun 18, 2005 - 11:53 PM
Post subject: RE: Update: XP File Corruption downs laptop, How to fix?

Quote:

Can you boot to the recovery CD and choose the Recovery option?

"I wasn’t worried because I have the recovery disk! The disk gives me two options A) do nothing B) erase and reformat the hard drive." These are my only options, to do nothing or slag the hard drive along w/ data.

Quote:

Fat32 or NTFS?

Dunno; how can I tell? The Knoppix boot lets me see my files and I can open a few, so the distro can recognise the file format. It also recognises the external drive and open files from that too, but still can't move files to it. Knoppix does have an option for NTSF but not is it's enabled.

Actually, all I want to do is repair or swap out the damaged file from, booting from a CD. And I don't think it should be this hard. Starting to feel more like a victim, then a customer, of Monsieur Gates. I'm plotting an invasion of Redmond. I'll bring the oil if you bring the catapult.

NoClue - Jun 20, 2005 - 04:51 PM
Post subject: RE: Update: XP File Corruption downs laptop, How to fix?

You might be able to type:

fdisk -l

...at the console to get a list of partitions and the filesystem types.

When you are booted to Knoppix, can you view and/or edit boot.ini?

Klaatu - Jun 20, 2005 - 05:55 PM
Post subject: Re: Update: XP File Corruption downs laptop, How to fix?

wbiazzo wrote:

Gentleman:

I am looking for an adapter to allow slaving the laptop drive to the desktop, and am hoping to find this in a local CompUSA. Tried Radio Shack and several other electronics places with no luck. I hate to think such an inelegant solution will win.

My problem IS as in KB entry 314477, and once I can get the laptop booted to the point I can doctor the boot.ini file, I can try the fix.

Finally, I was able to root around in the disks that come with my subscriptions, and locate a Knoppix ISO. The good news is that I was able to burn a CD and boot the laptop! I can actually get to the GUI, see my data, and open some files, and find the extra junk (external HD, etc) I hang off the laptop, BUT I CANNOT DO FILE TRANFERS! I have Knoppix 3.7, which is supposed run from the CD, so you don’t need to futz with the hard drive. I can’t figure out if I’m doing something wrong, or if the distro is gimmicked to prevent a Newbie from mucking up the HD, and hence is useless for what I need to do. So near!…

Any suggestions?

Few points to consider:

Knoppix just released it's "final" live cd, version 3.9. After this, it will go to a DVD or multiple CDs for more programs or other reasons. Knoppix is designed, for safety sake, to not write to your hd. You may be able to force it some way, but I never looked into this. Another live cd that works well is Mepis. I think it is a little more likely that you can write to the hd with that.

Here is another option, one that I may use myself. Techbargains has a coupon for buy-one get-one free or 50% off at PCMicrostore. They have an IDE to USB converter for about 18 bucks. It is from Sabrent but they may also market it as a house brand. It comes with an adaptor for 2.5 inch drives. You would have to take the drive out and lay on the table then connect it via usb to your desktop. But, you could write to it and that might solve your problem. I think the coupon includes $1 shipping. So, you could get two for about $20 or one for about $10. Having accumulated a few hd's at Black Friday sales etc, and having a 15 year old "cage" for a tape drive that will hold hd's, I may get a few of these things.

Good luck! Very Happy

Fuddster - Jun 21, 2005 - 03:58 AM
Post subject: Re: Update: XP File Corruption downs laptop, How to fix?

Klaatu wrote:

Knoppix is designed, for safety sake, to not write to your hd. You may be able to force it some way, but I never looked into this.

Mount the C: drive then right-click on the drive to activate read-write permissions. I've done this on several NTFS systems and successfully edited system files and deleted malicious files that were otherwise impossible to remove through Windows Explorer. Just make sure you realize that it is not fool-proof and there is always the potential for disaster.

wbiazzo - Jun 25, 2005 - 07:03 AM
Post subject: RE: Re: Update: XP File Corruption downs laptop, How to fix?

Hi!
Not much chance to work on problem; life intervened.

I have:
Bought several Big Books.
Sleuthed the Internet 'til my eyes fell out.
Tried wacky things

1. Discovered Safe Mode and variants available with the F8 key. All attempts end in failure with instructions to reload ntoskrnl.exe from the XP disks (that did not come with the !@#$^% Toshiba computer.)
Not sure I can copy this file from a different computer, as I 'm told the file calls are likely to differ. Found two ntoskrnl files indifferent parts of the WINDOWS folder, of different sizes. Why so many and why different?
2. Used Knoppix to boot laptop, and ferry ~12G data to spare hard drive (configured as FAT32). Using USB1.1 took a LOOONG TIME! As several of you pointed out, you need to mount any drive you wish to use, then go into properties of the drive and unclick the READ ONLY option.
3. Failed to get Knoppix to enable the captive NTFS module, as this requires a copy of both ntoskrnl.exe and ntdll.exe from the host machine; both files currently AWOL.
4. Failed to copy altered boot.ini file to laptop drive, (likely because of #3).
5. Boot. ini of laptop reads:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="microsoft windows XP home edition" /forceresetreg /fastdetect

The KB entries are hazy on what to change in the boot.ini in order to correct the KB 314477 (Corrupted ntoskrnl.exe file) problem, and I can't write to the NTFS system on the laptop HD anyway. Web search of "forceresetreg" failed to turn up info on this switch, which seems to force a reset of the registry? The one mention of this switch was a boot.ini file from a fella with a non booting Toshiba, buried in the 200+ line dump of his bootstrap.

About the desktop.
Strangely, the desktop points to "partition(2)". Weirdly, the desktop boot.ini has {WINDOWS="microsoft windows whistler Personal"}.Whatever that is!

6. Just got an IDE adapter for the 2.5 HD, and can try wring to the laptop HD from my desktop. Didn't see jumpers for setting the slave status on the 40G laptop HD.

(Boy, is that thing SMALL! Once played cards on a table made from a 10 MEG HD from a PDP 10. The table top was a huge gold colored ceramic disk with a thumb sized chip [the "head crash"] in it. We've come a long way.)

As a last resort, I'll use the recovery disk, which will reformat the drive. Reading the fine print, it seems all the applications that came with the machine (like Works, etc.) may not restore with the recovery; the only thing I'm sure I'll get is the XP. Tried to read the recovery disk on the desktop, but the AutoPlay kept kicking in, and I was afraid I could muck that up too.

Let me know if there are other thing I could try.

Thank You
WBiazzo