Here's the story.

I own 2 Emachines PCs. I bought another used Emachines system for my son. When it arrived, it worked fine, but the OS was all in French. I tried changing the language settings, but that did absolutely nothing. So, I decided to TRY using my recovery disk that I use for my other 2 systems. I do a full system recovery, but it's STILL in French. So, I figure I'll put the HD in my own PC, and reformat it. All goes according to plan, the drive formats normally, and then I put it back in the other system, and try to restore again. It seemed to WORK fine, and was actually IN ENGLISH!!, YET after the recovery finished, and the system rebooted, it won't start up. It tells me that the file SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\NTFS.SYS is missing. I put the drive back in my other PC, and had a look in the drive, and sure enough, that file is missing.

What would me next move be? I'm completely lost. If the restore CD isn't putting that file on the disk, why not?

Here's the details of the PC
Pentium 4
2 gig
512 meg RAM
160 gig HD
Windows XP


eMachines change MBoards and important components as quickly as i change socks...It's possible the restore CD you used is for completely different components...
Did either machine come with a Driver CD ? ?
If so have you attempted re-installing the drivers ? ?I guess I didn't mention this, but even when put in my own PC as the master, it still won't work.

I'm wondering if it may have something to do with the partition system. The HD is supposed to have a section for restore that is FAT32, and the main storage area is supposed to be NTFS. This drive now only has the NTFS section. XP after installed cannot simply be switched from one machine to another...
It will not boot properly ...if at all.
This is by design.
Collect all your CD's for both machines and post back with some more details...Quote from: patio on January 22, 2009, 08:09:44 PM

XP after installed cannot simply be switched from one machine to another...
It will not boot properly ...if at all.
This is by design.
Collect all your CD's for both machines and post back with some more details...