I installed service pack 6a (rather another tech in our business) and it gave me the ntoskrnl missing error..is it possible to fix it without repartitioning? i am not experienced at alllllll with servers and any help would be appreciated...i have tried to make a nt boot disk but when i do that, it simply gives me the same error (copying boot.ini from a workign nt server installation, because i cannot find boot.ini on the cd)....help me please! ANY help appreciated Willie Ediger

I'm not overly experienced with NT either but I think if you re-install NT the problem will stop..... or copy ntoskrnl from another server to problem server. I hope this helps..

Ideally your techy types should verify that the ARC path is correct. This is the info contained in the boot.ini which indicates exactly where the ntoskrnl.exe is. Possibly installing sp6a changed the ARC info? Possibly it somehow deleted the ntoskrnl.exe; or corrupted it? However without they have ntfsdos (a util from sysinternals.com) to read a presumably ntfs partition you probably have no way to see the boot.ini. If it's fat16, and it's over 2Gig then DOS/'9x can't see it either...; if it's fat16 and withing 2Gig (highly unlikely.) then a DOS/'9x boot-disk would allow access to requisite files. So since you can't boot through to your installation... have your Techy run NT setup\repair routine to inspect/repair boot-files etc.. This 'should' correct the problem. This is done from a CD boot or the 3 floppies. You can also opt to allow Setup to just attempt a repair (with or without the ERD for THIS system - not another's). Failing either repair approach try for an Upgrade of present installation; this should retain most setings, but again SP will probably have to re-applied... You can't usually use a boot,.ini from one system on another... - might be possible if both machines are identical in every respect? And the boot.ini is not on a CD; it's created during setup to the root of the active primary on the drive involved. It is usually a hidden/read-only file by default. Once you 'are' up and runnng again - MAKE the ERD for this system; keep it safe/current - for the next time.