Last week I had to do a repair from the NT cd on an NT 4 Workstation machine. Someone had uninstalled NAV 2001 and on restart the system crashed with BSOD involving the NTOSKRNL.exe. Last Known Good did not work, and they did not have an ERD (actually, they did not even have the O/S cd on hand). I booted to an NT 4 W/S cd and did a repair with system files only. It gave an error during file copy on a file called COMCAT.DLL. I had to skip the file. On restart, I got another BSOD with WIN32K.SYS. I ran repair again and this time chose to repair software settings. I again got the error with COMCAT.DLL, but was able to boot in VGA mode this time. Of course, this created a new profile for the user (added an extension of .000). Some programs worked and others had to be reinstalled, but the O/S seemed to be stable. The other problem that resulted was that the cd being SP1 only recognized 4Gb of the 19gb HDD and so created a second partition of 15gb that I had to format and move her data on to. My question... is there a recommended procedure for doing the repair? I probably should have chosen to repair/restore user settings, as well, to get rid of the need for a second user profile? Any suggestions about best procedure to follow?

I have never seen a "repaired" NT4 system work the way it used to, no matter what options you pick. It seems to be like the ERD, just a temporary deal to recover data until you can re-build.

Yes, I just did it that way so as not to lose all of her data. Also, they were light on hard copies of software so options were limited. I am glad it was not a server.

With a 'slightly' damaged NT4 an 'Upgrade of current installation' sometimes works OK and revitalises the installation. It will (usually) preserve all major settings - but usually you would also have to re-install the SP used before the 'crash' (or a later one if you prefer), once the 'upgrade' has succeeded. This is an option during a normal install if setup finds an existing installation. I'm not quite sure where this system is at just now; but it may be at this late stage the upgrade route might still work? CD boot or 3 floppies approach; choose the upgrade route. Also to deal with the large HD you apply updated atapi.exe - part of sp4 and later - during setup. More details on this issue/routine at: http://www.windows2000faq.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=13894 from John Savill's faqs at: http://www.windows2000faq.com - installations section. Your workaround the large drive size (the data partition) was creative and not to be sneezed at as fix...; but obviously the info just above (JS faq) would be useful to have around 'next time...'? If you apply sp4 or later you will/should have full access to the drive. Once all is OK again, make/keep safe/current the ERD. If prime concern is to recover/(re)gain access to data, then another route is to install a second/parallel version of NT. Via this second version you can then transfer off/back-up etc. data to safe location - then reconfigure/re-install whole system; or just add apps/utils etc. to second version - afterwhich dump/delete the original version off the drive. You would have a dual-boot NT/NT system for a while... one NT working the other not. A BSOD (blue-screen-of death) usually requires a true re-install, not a repair/upgrade routine.

Thanks for the comments trvlr. Yes, I did install SP6a on more than one occasion when I repaired the machine. Some of the programs did function and some did not. I also reinstalled modem, video and nic drivers. As I mentioned before, it did create a parallel user profile and I moved the info from the old to the new and all of the data to the larger new partition. Saving the data and as many working applications as I could was paramount (no pun intended as it is a paramount pictures workstation for soul food) along with keeping downtime to a minimum. Yes, I did create an ERD of the system when I had it back up. I also, visited the set the next week and had more issues with NAV2002. It would only get half-way through the install... being neither installed nor uninstalled. Other than this, the machine is working okay. Anyway, I told them to totally wipe the machine in a few weeks for the new season.