hi...i am having a terrible problem with my dell 4600 with windows xp, when i turn on my computer, i get the dell screen with a loading bar below it..this is normal...then i get a black screen and after a while it says Invalid boot.ini booting from c:// NTDETECT failed and then it appears to restart it self and this process goes no over and over i haved triedrunning in safe mode, same thing happens, i do not the a windows boot disk but i am trying to obtain one, is there a way i can fix this without losing my files? thank you in advance

Howdy cso.dave and welcome to PCHF,
I was wondering if you can boot into safe mode on your pc. Aslo does the pc have a floppy drive?

yes i have tried to boot in safe mode, the computer gives me the same error boot.ini invalid and NTDETECT failed and then it restarts itself, yes the computer does have a floppy drive

Hya Dave , give this a try:

1.Boot with XP CD
2.Press R to load the Recovery Console.
3.Type: bootcfg and press enter

Hope it helps.

Edit Joe beat me to it.

thank you, this has worked and all my files are still intact...thank you

Great news! And youre welcome. :smiley:


Marked as Fixed , and see you around.