Just installed new hardware in my system: AMD 1 GIG, FIC AD11 motherboard, and 256 DDR RAM. FSB is set to 266. (Latest BIOS updated applied and recent MB drivers were loaded to Win2K install. Also applied Win2K SP-2 once it finally loaded.)

A fresh install of Windows 2000 Prof. goes through without a hitch...when it reboots for the first time it stops immediately (Win 2K black screen) with a "ntoskrnl.exe missing or corrupted" error. Sometimes when I turn the system off completely and start it back up it works fine. Most times (warm or cold boot) it stops with the ntoskrnl.exe error. Once the system finally boots it seems to be stable.

In addition to new hardware, I'm using Diamond Monster Fusion PCI video, Seagate Barracuda II 20 GB hard drive, and 40X CD-ROM. Hard drive is partitioned with primary drive around 8 GB.

I've tried multiple installations with different hard drives and different copies of Win2K Prof.

Thanks!

Try booting with a Windows 9x disk and typing FDISK/MBR? Sounds like you're getting ghosts......

Thanks for tip...I'm going to try it.

However, I've tried this setup with different hard drives (Seagate Barracuda 8G, Seagate 4G, and WD 10G) and they all seem to bomb at some point with the ntoskrnl.exe error.

Could it be a timing issue in the NT bootup sequence?

DO NOT ever use a win9x bootdisk to fdisk/mbr a win2k install. You could lose your win2k partition. Instead use fixmbr from the win2k recovery console from the win2k bootdisks. However this is not your problem anyways since you can obviously access your drive and start booting. I can't believe how many people suggest this as a first approach to solve all of their problems. It is terrible advice and fixing the MBR should always be a last resort and if done needs to be done correctly or you WILL lose data.

I think it might be a problem with ACPI. During the DOS install you will see a prompt at the bottom of the screen to "Press F6 to install SCSI" or somehting similar. At this point press F5. A small box will pop up and allow you to manually install the type of computer you are running (ACPI multi proc, ACPI single proc, Standard PC, etc.) Choose standard PC and install the rest like normal. Depending on what is chosen, different versions of NTOSKRNL.exe are installed. If your computer is trying to install as ACPI but is not fully compliant you may be throwing errors like you mentioned.

Mark - Good call on the ACPI, however even if I run a fresh setup and select Standard PC, I'm confronted with one of three errors:
1) \winnt\system32\config\systemced missing or corrupt.
2) ntfs.sys missing or corrupt, or
3) ntoskrnl.exe missing or corrupt.

All of these errors occur at the same place (black Win2K startup screen) except for the ntfs.sys error which occurs alittle later in the startup process, but still on black Win2K startup screen.

Interesting discovery though - if I boot the computer after disabling ACPI in the BIOS, the system reboots at the exact (as far as I can tell) same place where I receive the startup errors. This reboot is a cyclical process and can only be interrupted by turning the machine off.

Found an Microsoft KB article - Q269075 regarding the SYSTEMced error that indicates the system hive in the registry is corrupt, but since the error occurs after the first reboot of a fresh installation, I don't see how this applies?

Thanks again for your assistance!!!