my hard drive started to run slow, so I rebooted, and when I did an error message came up saying could not boot...I ran the vista repair disc, and it says it cannot repair, that the following error has occurred: c:\windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe can't be found or is corrupt or missing. I went to the command prompt and ran a chkdsk /r and hit hit enter, after going thru almost 40% of stage 4 of 5, it says not enough disc space to repair, unexpected error has occured...the harddrive is a Seagate 250 and has about 50% free space. Does anyone have any suggestion or have encountered this problem? I would be most appreciative of any help. Thanking you in advance.

MickeyME

Hi Mickey,

I'm not an expert, but your problem sounds almost exactly like what happened to me last summer with my HP laptop. Only difference was, my error had something to do with winlogon.exe, I think. I was not able to do a system repair either because of errors. I ended up having to replace the hard drive. Sorry, this probably isn't much help, but it sounds like a problem with your hard drive, and you might have to replace it.

I would suggest running a free, bootable hard drive diagnostic utility from the manufacturer of your hard drive.
Here's a link for them (SeaTools for DOS): http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools/
You'll have to create a bootable CD to run them from, so read the directions carefully - post back if you encounter any difficulties.

Thanks John...downloaded and made my bootable CD, no problems...however, it found 90 errors and could only fix 1, rest failed to repair. I have not had great luck with Seagate, they have replaced this hard drive 3 times, my original one went South within 90 days, and they replaced it with "Recertified" replacements. I know I should have backed up, and did in Feb, but haven't since, so guess all is lost....will keep trying, we all hope for that one in a million chance of Windows booting.

MickeyME

I've got a Western Digital on the wife's system that has a couple of bad blocks - and they failed the test in Windows. I'm hoping that I can fix them outside of Windows with the bootable test - but if not, it's time to clone it to another HD. Too bad since the drive is just over a year old - so no warranty for me!