missing or corrupt <windows root> system32/ntoskrnl.exe

Hi everyone

Am new to this so Im hoping that I am in the right section.

My son bought a Acer Aspire One netbook 2 months ago and today when he turned it on the following message came up

missing or corrupt <windows root> system32/ntoskrnl.exe Then it said something about re-installing the file

We have searched online to find out how to fix this, and what exactly happened, but all the answers involved inserting the XP disk, which obviously netbooks dont have.

Can anyone tell us what to do, and how this happend? We are not tech savvy so this is very complicated for us.

If it cant be fixed, do you think Warrenty will cover it.

Many Thanks for your time

Laura and Graeme

 

A warranty claim would result in the same thing as if you were to do a factory restore yourself from the recovery partition. Except Acer is renowned for slow warranty repairs / returns. They will also outright lie to you (speaking from personal experience) and basically it's just not worth it unless it's an actual hardware issue.

If you can, buy yourself an external DVD-RW drive. They plug into the USB ports on the AAO's, can be booted from and will enable you to follow the instructions you've found to repair the Operating System. You will also need to have an XP disk that matches your machine (XP Pro vs XP Home, OEM vs otherwise).

If you're not afraid to lose any data that's currently on the drive, you can go straight for a recovery.
If you have data you don't want to lose, the best bet is to grab the external drive and the XP disk and run a repair-install