I've been running windows xp home on an amd64 3200+ with Maxtor hard drive. Windows boot failed suddenly with a blue screen stop error: Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt <windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe.
Please re-install a copy of the above file.

I went to Microsoft support and reinstalled the file per the kb article for that error. Then I got a succession of different blut screen stop errors. I called Micorsoft support and spent hours on the phone. They finally said I needed to do a good disk check.

Rignt now my main concern is recovering my files from the hard disk. I have a working ubcd disk as well as a Bart's PEbuilder boot disk. I also have another computer on a local Belkin54g router. (The down computer also has a belkin 64g card). I can't get the belkin to work using the ubcd.

Can anyone help with:
A. getting the two computers talking to each other so I can save the critical files from the hard disk to the working computer.

B. identifying a good utility to see what's wrong with the hard disk on the down computer.

Thanks for anything you can do.

Tyndish
++newbie

First thing I would suggest is boot to your UBCD4Win disk (hopefully 3.12) & copy off your files that you need to save. You will need either a USB flash drive or another hard drive to connected to that computer because fixing your driver problem with your Belkin wireless card is not the point. Saving your data is. Go to File Management / Explorers & pick one of the programs to explore your hard drive & find your files that you need. Select the needed files & copy them to the USB drive or the other hard drive.

After you have done that then I would run SpinRite 6.0 on your have drive on setting level 2. This will check for bad sectors on your hard drive & remap them & recover data from that sector IF POSSIBLE.
Warning though this could take a while depending on how bad off the hard drive is.

Then when that is done go back to your UBCD4Win disk & run the Check Disk utility to fix the file structure & registry problems if it can. If it finds some problems & makes some corrections then reboot the system to your hard drive
and see if it will boot to your OS. If you do boot successfully to your OS after all that then GREAT!!! However we are not done yet.

If there are bad sectors on your hard drive & there were found & remapped by SpinRite, that does not make your hard drive all better.
Everything you just did was a band aid to get you data / OS working again. The next thing you should do is get a new hard drive & clone your old drive to the new one with either Symantec Ghost or some other imaging program.
There are many free ones on the net, just look around & you will find them. Go to Majorgeeks.com to the Drive Utilities area.

What I described above is what I do several times a week for customers who bring their computer in to the tech shop that I am the head tech. If you have a relatively simple drive issue then what I describe should work for you.
If it is not simple then just get your data off if possible, get a new hard drive, & install a new OS on your new hard drive.

Last thing, no matter what you may have to spend money on software or hardware or both to fix this your self. If you take it some where to do it for you, you may spend more or less depending on the tech shop.

The truth about computers:

1. Your OS will fail in some way.
2. Your hardware will die in time.
3. Your programs will change that you use to access your data.
4. All that remains that you care about is your data. So do not mourn the other three if they are lost.