Expert: Chris Schuh - 8/26/2006

Question
I have a compaq 2800 note book, P4 1.4ghz,256mb ram. 20gb hdd. recently,i accidentaly deleted NT detect file(i think it was a dos one)from the c drive.now when i enter my power-on password(before user login)and the comp just starts to boot up,a messge appears on the screen NT detect failed and it fails to boot up taking me back to power-on password screen.i dont want to lose any data on the hard disk as would presumably happen with the restore disk

Answer
Hi,

You'll need to go to another NT machine and create a boot diskette. Boot the machine off of that and then through DOS, you'll have to back up all of the data you want to keep onto some other form of media (either to another network drive or to diskettes).

After that, you'll have to format the hard drive (erasing all programs and all data) and re-install Windows NT from the beginning. Unfortunately, there is no way to recover this computer without erasing everything first.

Cheers,

Chris