thanks for the reply. Here is my latest step. I put the ntoskrnl.exe file onto a cd. I've booted up in recovery mode - **it doesn't give me the option to choose what operating system / nor enter a admin password ** - it goes right to the c:\> prompt. From there, this is what I typed - copy f:\ntoskrnl.exe c:\windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe Then I get, after a minute of the computer chugging away, it says Access is denied.

I'm going to try and rename ntoskrnl.exe as old and then copy new file in...I'll see if that works...but I am stumped....can't seem to figure out why I get access denied, bad paramaters, etc.