Lot of us are able to install Windows operating system ourselves because of the excellent help documentation made available by Microsoft. However, at times this step can sometimes backfire as the critical files can go missing making the system become inaccessible. A similar problem may occur when you change the file system of primary partition from FAT32 to NTFS. In such cases, you should restore the missing files using Windows XP CD to recover hard disk. If the method does not work, then you should use a third-party hard drive recovery utility to recover the inaccessible data.

Let us suppose you have a Windows XP system that has FAT file system. You have just converted your FAT file system to NTFS using the “convert drive: /fs:ntfs” command. However, when you start the system after the conversion the system does not start. The following error message is displayed in this case:

“Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: System32\Drivers\Ntfs.sys”

Cause:

The most possible cause of this problem could be either of the following reasons:

The Ntfs.sys file is missing after the FAT-NTFS conversion The Ntfs.sys file has corrupted after the FAT-NTFS conversion.

Resolution:

Restoring the missing Ntfs.sys file will enable you to overcome this problem. This could be done using the following steps:

Restart the system after inserting the Windows XP CD-ROM. Press R when the 'Welcome to Setup' screen appears to select the 'To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R' option. At the command prompt, enter the following commands to rename the existing Ntfs.sys file. Press Enter after each command: cd \windows\system32\drivers

ren ntfs.sys ntfs.old Type the following command and press Enter to copy the Ntfs.sys file in the system hard disk: copy cd:\i386\ntfs.sys drive:\windows\system32\drivers Type 'quit', after removing the Windows XP CD, and press Enter to exit Recovery Console. Restart the system.

If you still are getting the same error message even after performing the method, then you should look to recover hard disk data with the help of an efficient third-party data recovery software. These disk recovery utilities have rich user interface that help in recovering all the data without any difficulty.

The most reliable hard disk recovery software is Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery, which recovers data from hard drives, external HDDs, pen drives, iPods, etc. With the ability to recover deleted emails from Outlook Express and MS Outlook, this utility recovers disks in FAT, NTFS, and exFAT file systems. In addition, this hard disk recovery utility is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, and 2000.