Please tell me any other information I need to provide.

as of a couple of days ago I have been having the following problems on startup.

1st a screen appears saying:

Please select the operating system to start

microsoft xp home edition
microsoft xp home edition (original)

use the up and down arrow keys to move the highlight to your choice
press enter to choose.

For trouble shooting, advanced startup options for windows, press F8


now if I select the 1st one being microsoft xp home edition it then goes to this screen:

windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt
<windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe.
please reinstall a copy of the above file

what does that all mean???

next if I choose the 2nd option which is microsoft xp home edition (original) the following then happens:

the windows boot screen does its thing then the screen stays black and will not go onto the logon screen. The mouse arrow is there but make a beep noise if you click anywhere on the screen. I then have to reboot the computer and choose option 2 again then it boots up properly.

does anyone know what is causing this? We have had so many problems with this computer, I just wish it would work properly.

This post has been edited by LeonieP: Jul 2 2007, 11:46 PM

Hello,

My guess is that you have tried to install windows twice, and the first one got half way then had some sort of an error now it does not allow you to boot without telling you that one of the files is missing or corrupt.

I would just re-format the hard drive and reinstall Windows, this would however still give you yet another boot option which you do not want, and if you need any of the info from the provious installation, formatting the hard drive will wipe it clean.

Once the installation is done, you can remove 2 of the invalid boot options by going to

Please DO NOT do this unless you REALLY understand what you are clicking on:

Start >>> Run >>> type 'msconfig' into the box >>> click on 'boot.ini' and then on >>> 'check all boot paths'

If my memory serves me correctly it will find all the invalid entries and you can remove them, yet again i re-itterate that you should not be doing the above step unless you are 100% sure of what you are doing! Please be careful

I also think one of the senior people could tell you how to install a fresh copy without getting 3 boot up options showing

Hope this helps a bit.

well that makes no sense to me as I didn't reinstall windows at all. after we got the new hard drive it had only been installed once and that was ages ago.

doesn't matter anymore about having to select which windows to use i worked out how to fix it, thanks anyway.


the problem I still have is the black screen that it gets stuck on before the logon screen, is there any solution for this or should we just continue to press restart so it loads properly the 2nd time??

This post has been edited by LeonieP: Jul 3 2007, 07:14 PM