what's the deal with my PC? a few weeks back, i kept getting this message that NTOSKRNL.exe file is corrupt or missing, so i simply restarted the computer then the whole winxp boot-up process worked again. then a few days later though, it won't boot-up anymore, so i had to reformat the whole drive and reinstall a fresh copy of winxp. it wiped out all my important files. now i have a fresh copy of winxp and everything's working fine (at least for a few days), then i get the same message again today upon boot-up (that the NTOSKRNL.exe is corrupt or missing). what's wrong with my PC? even if i tried to reinstall winxp, the whole problem keeps coming back? i don't want to lose all my data again. your help will be appreciated. thanks.

what's wrong with my PC? 1. Keyboard issue. 2. Miscellaneous corruption. 3. Corrupt boot.ini file. 4. Missing boot.ini file. 5. Missing or corrupt ntoskrnl.exe file. 6. Windows NT installed on a partition bigger then 7.8GB 7. Corrupted hard disk drive or severely corrupted Windows. Source i_Xp/VistaUser

You only have 64MB of RAM ????? You lose some of the features of XP, with that small amount. Add 256, or 512 is best. Keep informed on recent California and Nevada earthquakes http://www.data.scec.org/recenteqs.... We Shake and Bake

reinstalling isn't the first step in solving a boot issue. It's the last. Backup your data. Always a great first step. Boot into recovery console. Run the utilities fixboot and fixmbr If you can boot run chkdsk /r on the drive via cmd prompt. Answer yes to the question and restart so it runs. Report back when done. Imagine the power of knowing how to internet search http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/Teachin...

Check your Memory. http://memtest86.com/ There is a version to create a bootable floppy diskette and/or an ISO for creating a CD. Run it overnight and any failures are unacceptable. Also run chkdsk /r This will check the disk for weak/bad sectors. Note that it takes a long time to run.

If all you had to do was restart the computer to get it to work again, my guess is that your hard drive may have an issue with bad sectors or something. Look at reply #4 towards the bottom for how to do a disk check. But in order to do this, you must boot to the XP CD first, then at the first screen (that says "Welcome to Windows Setup"), press R. When you get to the prompt, login and type the command listed in reply #4 (chkdsk /r) and press enter. WinSimple Software