ntoskrnl.exe is missing or corrupt

[jerasi]

Hi,
I was doing some maintenance to the server yesterday. I run defrag on both drives and then run a scandisk and rebooted the server (for scandisk to run).
The server never came back online. I rebooted again (using the reset button) and got the following error:
"windows could not start because the follwoing file is missing or corrupt

Windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
Please reinstall the above file".

How do I fix this? I can't get back into windows.



Let me put it this way:
While StressLevel Is High
Productivity -= 1
Marriage = Nothing
End While

 

[WillShakespeare]

Have you checked whether there is a floppy in the floppy drive?

Will

 

[pinkpanther56]

At what point did you restet the server using the power button?

 

[jerasi]

There is no floppy in the drive and there is no CD in the CD Rom.
Once the computer restarted (after doing the scandisk). It hang on a screen saying rebuilding indices for ActiveDirectory and that I need to restart in active directory restore mode. That screen presisted through the night (I went to sleep thinking the scandisk takes a while, so I didn't wait). I got back to the server this morning, that's when I pressed the power button and got the "ntoskrnl.exe" error.
Thanks for your time on this.


Let me put it this way:
While StressLevel Is High
Productivity -= 1
Marriage = Nothing
End While

 

[WillShakespeare]

Scan disk is never a good thing to do on a server! I did it once on our Exchange, and it mistook a key file for a fragment, and killed the Exchange. Luckily I was with someone who knew what the problem was, or we would have been stuffed!

Anyway, to the point, you may be faced with a repair install. Or even a dodgy hard-drive. I would suggest running a server diagnostic (If it is Dell, the disk that came with it).

Will

 

[WillShakespeare]

Sorry... the diagnostic would be to check the hard-drive, specifically.

Will

 

[pinkpanther56]

Can you boot from the windows cd and run a repair this might repair corrupt files.

I had this exact error when we rebuilt a server and altered the partitions, when i restored the system partition from tape the boot.ini file was pointing to the wrong partition. It could be this file that's damaged.

 

[pinkpanther56]

Couple of handy links.

This is for xp but the procedure is the same, it might work as a last resort.

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic8356.html

and here's a link to some MS suggestions.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/events/windows2003srv/tnt1-94.mspx

 

[WillShakespeare]

Pinkpanther:
I too have repaired an installation after such a failure, only to find a week later, the probelm happening again, only more severe... because the HDD was beginning to die.

I think in any situation, it's best to start at the highest level, and work your way down (or lowest, and up).
That said, you have good advice, and including it I suggest the following (each step if the one before fails):

1. Check HDD.
2. Try Windows Repair Console.
3. Use a partition Tool to automatically find and sort out the broken partition (The best for me is BootITNG - works every time, and it does other tricks like resizing hdd partitions, and such free to download and use, but a cheap $39 if you plan to keep it beyond 30 days)
4. Try Repair installation, as PP linked above.

Good luck!

Will

 

[pinkpanther56]

WillShakespeare i know exactly where you're coming from the reason we restored that server from tape in the end was that 2 out of 3 disks on our RAID5 setup went offline at the same time but only for a split second (it only registered that one had gone off in the evt log). It generated all sorts of errors that a repair fixed temporarily but in the end only rebuilding the RAID container sorted it.

Good luck jerasi.

 

[WillShakespeare]

Exactly!

In this case, I suspect 2 things:

[ol]
[li]The Scan disk automatically trashed one of the boot files, in which case a repair may work.[/li]
[li]The HDD became (or was discovered to be, by the scan disk operation) corrupt, because either:

[ul]
[li]jerasi powered off at the wrong time (like you originally suggested PP), or[/li]
[li]the scan disk discovered a few physical block errors, and then hung trying to compensate, and the boot files got trashed.[/li]
[/ul]
[/li]
[/ol]

Will