I have a Dell Dimension XPS 600R computer that was working fine. All of a sudden, it rebooted and I got the following message when it attempted to reboot: Invalid BOOT.INI file Booting from C:\winnt\ NTDETECT failed I was able to get it to boot from cdrom and I selected R to repair an existing W2000 installation. Now I am at a c:\windows prompt but I am not sure how to proceed. Any suggestions? Thank you in advance!

Start with running chkdks /f. When was the last time you defragged your drive? NTFS? Can you edit your boot.ini?

If I use a bootable CD it tells me there is a NTFS partition. I don't know when Chkdsk was run last. I can't seem to get to a valid c: prompt. How would I go about editing the boot.ini file? If I try to reinstall W2000 will I lose all the data on the drive? I particularly interested in the personal.pst file.

Create a floppy which should boot your 2k system. Copy ntldr & ntdetect.com (from another 2k installation or the install CD - \i386) to a newly formatted floppy, along with a boot.ini file you've created. Assuming 2k on partition 1 or disk 1, it should look like this:- [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect (just copy this to notepad, and save as boot.ini (type all files, not text document). If this gets you in, I'd run chkdsk as suggested - and check the boot.ini in the root of C:. You might also run fixboot from recovery console. If no good, you can do a repair reinstall (NOT a repair - read instructions here:- http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;292175&Product=win2000. This will leave data, settings & apps intact, lose windows updates (so need to reapply latest service pack - unless you've a SP4 install CD & visit windows update)