MS Server 2008 won't boot up

[Matrix316]

hi,
i got Microsoft Windows Server 2008 that doesn't work fine after booting it says “Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: system32\drivers\safeboot.sys”and after a reboot the same error message came back,Does anyone know what causes this issue and how to fix it?Any help will be extremely appreciated.

[Lillebror]

The problem is someone/thing removed safeboot.sys from the system32/drivers directory - it's essential. Unfortunately all the clever repair software does not support 4.1 (that version is at least 5 years old) - your only option is to do a disaster recovery decrypt of the drive, then do something sneaky like rename serial.sys to safeboot.sys to get the machine to boot again.

[Solomon]

Just check in the BIOS that the drive is set to auto (size). If not, you can boot to the main drive which can then see the secondary but you'll never be able to boot from it.

[Matrix316]

Safeboot used to be on the machine. It was removed and decrypted. The problem is that it didn't remove the driver reference somewhere. If I can delete that reference, I think I can get around this. I need to know what file or registry hive loads all these .sys files