When I try to boot up, most of the time, I get that message.
I've googled it and tried most of the solutions. i.e.
NTOSKRNL.EXE is missing or corrupt.
It's been really odd though. Sometimes it will boot up after 5 or 6 retries. At first I thought it was the keyboard thing, and it unplugging it worked at first. So I ran a registry cleaner. It worked again. Then not. I ran windows repair. Worked. Then not. Messed with bios settings, worked, then not.
I just upgraded a bunch of stuff on my comp so I installed a bunch of new drivers (but didn't wipe the original hard drive). So I'm guessing it may have to do with that, but reformatting is a last resort.
The other thing it might have to do with is how I have my CDROM and harddrive set up on the IDE cord. My new motherboard only has one IDE slot (the rest SATA) and both previous mentioned devices are old, they only use IDE slots. And because of how things fit in my case, my CDROM has the "master" end, and my harddrive the middle "slave" connection. I have it properly configerued in my BIOS (I'm pretty sure anyway) and my CDROM pin's are set to slave.
Any ideas?