My favorite thing when driving into work is "the following servers are offline" alert messages!
Two of my drives failed at the same time in my raid 5 array which resulted in the server being unable to rebuild the c drive. Luckily, we keep backups of all the important information, but the server still had to have it's OS re-installed. Everything went super, or so I thought, I reinstalled server 2003 and rebooted; then I saw the evil error...
Invalid Boot.ini
booting from C:\windows
NTDETECT Failed
After a tinkering around for quite some time, I resorted to googling, which was chaotic and filled with tons of strange advice ranging from expanding the ntdetect.com file from the install disc, to rewriting a custom boot.ini file based on the partition. The 3rd line of the error seems to change from person to person, and doesn't seem to be the root of the issue. Something is most likely wrong with your boot.ini which is causing the rest of the problems.
NTDETECT Failed
After a tinkering around for quite some time, I resorted to googling, which was chaotic and filled with tons of strange advice ranging from expanding the ntdetect.com file from the install disc, to rewriting a custom boot.ini file based on the partition. The 3rd line of the error seems to change from person to person, and doesn't seem to be the root of the issue. Something is most likely wrong with your boot.ini which is causing the rest of the problems.
What worked for me
Simply reinstalling the operating system didn't work, and left some trace of the previous OS causing the issue I was having. I had to go back through the install process, and instead of just reinstalling, I deleted the entire partition and then remade it while installing. This worked perfectly for me, and was quite simple.
What else you can try
Being able to totally wipe the partitions may not work for everyone, if the above doesn't work for you I would try some of these solutions. If you didn't know this already, boot.ini is a hidden system file that should be in your root C: drive. You need to show hidden files/folders and display hidden system files in order to see it.
Grab your install disc
I would start by grabbing your install disc, you will need it to access the recovery console which is the heart of pretty much all these fixes.
Next I would try and run a chkdsk, it's a long shot, but if it works it's easy! Just load the recovery console and do: chkdsk /r
If that doesn't work and you have another server that has the same setup, you can try copying that systems boot.ini file and using that on the server you are having issues with.
If you are still unable to get the system up and running I would google some more. There are a few other fixes you can try, but they can get a bit complex and other sites have done a good job of describing them.
