We have had a similar problem ...

Certain NT4 boot files have to be within a certian block at the front of the
disk (I believe its 8gb).

If your disk was already getting close or over 8gb full then any new patched
or fixed system files will be placed beyond this boundary and are therefore
not found during the boot up.

If you can boot into W2K recovery console or get the disk onto another
machine, you should be able to make some space to accomodate the files
needed before the 8gb boundary.

The favourite that we have found is to remove the swap file (pagefile.sys) -
quite often created when the disk is fresh and at the beginning of the
logical disk), rename the original file that is found to be a problem
(ntoskrnl.exe) to something else so that it stays physically where it is on
disk and then copy the file into the newly created spare space with its
proper name.

In this way you place the required file back within the 8gb boundary and the
system will boot. When it boots the swap file will be recreated (so make
sure that you have space for it on the remainder of the disk!)

Once you are up and running, you can remove the originally renamed file as
it is now redundant.

This is NOT guaranteed ... but got us out of the pickle a number of times.
Be careful - don't use MOVE or REN as these do not actually make a copy of
the file. If this doesn't work then find another file that has been in place
for a long while and move it off to another disk temporarily.

If all else fails, you may be able to get the space used to below 8gb on the
disk and defrag, but I have never had to go that far yet.

good luck !

jON

Hi Roder and Jon,

Basically, what you have said is correct - NT4 has problems with loading system
files that are outside the area addressable by conventional CHS Hard Disk Drive
Access during startup. The ONLY reliable long-term solution to this problem is
to make sure your boot and system partitions fit within the boundary.

Have a look at:  http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au/bigdisk.htm  for my slant on how all
this is best accomplished.

Calvin.

If you really want to have system partition over 7.8Gb boundary (even i have
no idea why anyone want to do such thing) creating of NT boot floppy is a
MUST.

Some of the other suggestions you're getting are probably easier and will
also work, but I've resolved this a few times by mounting the drive as a
secondary drive in another system and then defragmenting it.  I've also just
fixed the problem by resizing the boot partition correctly with
PartitionMagic (which them moves any file that need to be).