impossible to boot windows 2000 because file ntoskrnl.exe is missing- pls help

[teuzzo75]

Hello to everyone here, hope that somebody can help me:

recently my hard disk crashed. My OS is Windows 2000 (service pack 4) and, as i said, my HD crashed suddenly just because i uninstalled a program, and now my pc can't boot.

Moreover, my HD is encrypted with the software "Safe guard easy" by Ultimaco. In a sense, this might make things worse- of course i know the password, but the fact that my 2 partitions are encrypted could mean that i cannot have access to them when trying to recover data with a software like, say, "Easy recovery" by Ontrack.

Anyway, i've got some precious data inside and i must try to recover them.

In fact  i used the software "Easy recovery" by Ontrack to recover data from the hard disk that i couldn't boot anymore,and the software worked well because it recovered 71 giga (almost everything).

But it found a folder of 8 giga filled with .gho files and another folder of 7 giga filled with jpgs files (1 giga each!)

how can i open these files?

why didn't the software give back the original directories as they were?

By the way, it brought back another directory: dir0.qbw, dir1.sit, dir2.ri, dir3.jpg (the one i said before), dir11.swf, dir12.iqy....

i don't know what to do with these.

But the point is that i should just make the machine boot again. this would solve everything in a much easier way, i think.

 But first of all, it said
"NTLDR" missing, so (following an advice found browsing the net), i made a diskette containing the file "boot.ini"(as a wordpad file)  , "ntdetect" and "ntldr" (both found in c:\WINNT\servicepackfiles\i386), and then i booted the machine from the diskette.

 For a moment it seemed to boot but after a while it said
"Impossible to boot Windows 2000 because this file is missing or damaged:

\system32\ntoskrnl.exe

please install again a copy of this file.

Did this happen because i wrote bad lines inside the file "boot.ini" that i created myself and put in the diskette? in fact i'm not quite sure that its content is totally correct. If it's this, can someone explain to me what are the comman lines that it should contain?

Or, if this is not the case, how can i find this file (\system32\ntoskrnl.exe) ?
Can i extract it from another pc running windows 2000? and then, what should i do?

thanks in advance for your replies

bye

Teuzzo

[Aegis]

HERE is a Computer Hope reference which addresses the subject.  It should be a good start!

[ALAN_BR]

i made a diskette containing the file "boot.ini"(as a wordpad file)

I do not know for sure, and after many decades I am still in the fortunate position of never being in your position, but, was that a good idea ?

Whenever I need to create such a file I would only consider using Notepad.
Other editors such as Wordpad may create something that looks the same to the human, but is not quite right for the computer.
I have experienced editors that append a Ctrl^Z delimiter to the end of a file - I could never see it on the screen, but the computer could and misbehaved accordingly.

I do not know if Wordpad appends a Ctrl^Z, or if it has any other nasty habits,
but I have never had that sort of aggravation with Notepad.

Regards
Alan

[teuzzo75]

thanks for your advice, unfortunately using notepad it's the same, it doesn't work.

maybe the command lines i wrote in the .INI file are wrong. Can someone tell me what should i write inside this file?

[ALAN_BR]

Sorry, I am out - I have not looked at an INI file since Windows XP came along.

I am sure others will come to help,
alternatively just above this page is a Search box, and "boot.ini" will give you 90 relevant results

Regards
Alan