A few days ago I obtained a computer virus. I used all the popular tools to remove the problem, and to clean the registry. After doing this, I discovered that I could no longer BOOT from my hard drive boot disk. I have two identical Dell Dimension computers running WixXP PRO, so I created a bootable floppy disk and copied three files onto the floppy. The three files that I copied were Boot.ini, Ntldr, and NTdetect.com. When I inserted this floppy into my damaged computer, and booted from the floppy, everything CAME up fine, and I was able to access all of my data and programs.

I THOUGHT I would be able to copy these three files to my root directory (C:), and I would be up and running again.....did not work. I used my DELL WinXP to recreate the boot.ini back onto my HDD, and that did not work either. I noticed that the I386 directory was not on my HDD, so I created that directory, and copied the three files from my floppy into this new directory, that did not work either. I am at a loss as how to resolve this issue. I did try System Restore from several earleir dates, and all failed.

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install