Hi Phil,



As to the cause of the corruption, that's hard to guess from a distance.

Could be a virus or other malware.

Hard shutdowns don't help either.



The description about missing ntoskrnl.exe is very misleading.

My first guess is to repair the boot.ini on the XP drive (C:\boot.ini )

From Win 7,  check that the file has the proper description as a boot loader.

Open it in Notepad or similar text editor and correct.



See here  https://neosmart.net/wiki/ntoskrnl-exe-missing-corrupt/



See Microsoft for editing the boot.ini

A proper boot.ini looks like this.



"This is a sample of a default Boot.ini file from a Windows XP Professional computer. "

 [boot loader]

 timeout=30

 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

 [operating systems]

 multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect 



 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289022



More examples of boot.ini 

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mosaddique/Boot%20INI%20Sample%20files.html



For myself I've used EasyBCD for dual or multiboot, since I multiboot regardless of what was installed first or latest install.

IOW, installing Vista or XP after a Win 7 install. or Linux installs.



A copy of ERDC 5.0 would do the job very nicely if you can still find it. 

So would many rescue discs ,such as Hiren's boot CD 



Peter E

PS ,I read your follow up



--------------------------------------------------

From: "Phillip Williams" 

Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2014 5:45 PM

To: <[log in to unmask]>

Subject: [PCBUILD] ntoskrnl missing



Greetings,



 I have a dual boot pc with xp pro 32 bit on one drive and win 7 64

bit on another.



A couple weeks back, it started hanging up on the mobo screen

(American megatrends) when booting to the xp drive. All I could do was

a hard shutdown then it would usually go on to the "choose os" screen

and xp would load ok. This would only happen once every three or four

boots.



 Lately when trying to boot to xp I get this message; <Windows

root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe is missing or corrupt. Please re-install a

copy of the above file.



 I'm having trouble locating my xp pro disc and wonder if there's

somewhere else I can get a copy. I looked at an xp home disc I found

to see if the version number might be the same (I know, wishful

thinking) but the file version dosen't show as the installed corrupt

file does when viewed in win 7.



 I also can't figure the key press to go into safe mode. Not sure if

that's even possible with this file corrupted.



-Phil-



        



         PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download

                     visit our download web page at:

                  http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml