I have a duel boot machine on 2 different hard drives. The first is XP 32bit SP3 the 2nd is XP 64bit. All was working great till yesterday a virus/trojan got through my virus and spyware software.

I finally just decided to reinstall the 32-bit version again because it was old and slow anyway. I did so and it is working.

My 64bit does not and it did earlier today before the 32 bit reinstall. I'm confident it has everything to do with the reinstall of the 32 bit OC. I edited my boot.ini file manually. Both OS show up in the boot menue and I can start the 32 bit OS and run it fine. I get an error on bootup for the 64 bit OS.
windows could not start because the following file is missing or corruptwindows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe.

No changes have been made on this hard drive (64bit OS HDD) other than my attempt to rebuild the boot by using windows CD recovery fixboot

I would appreciate any advice on how to fix this problem.

hi, heathcliff, welcome to the PCHF, we're not just a forums, we are a comminity.

replace the file using your recovery console, try replacing the file first. post back

I will have to figure out how. I don't have much experience with the recovery.

if d: drive being your cd.

Load your windows recovery cd,
windows propts you what volume you want to logon to depending on what boot your 64x bit is loaded to could be 1 or 2.
use command

copy d:\windows\i386\ntoskrnl.exe c:\windows\system32

i would also do a bootcfg /rebuild

what i would try to do is google that actual file download it and then manually place it in the path that it says its missing from by right clicking start and navigating thru the drop downs and pasting it in there. that shold fix it. ive done that few times with my old pc and fixed it up .

I tried what you said to copy and got a file not found error.
Planet AMD64 web site says to copy (H is my CD drive and F is my 64 bit OS)
I type
Expand H:\i386\ntoskrnl.ex_ C:\windows\system32
I am giving that a try now.

I also did the bootcfg\rebuild

I successfully expanded the ntoskrnl file and atempted a reboot I got the same error.