NTLDR is missing

thefatherofzen · Jan 17, 2014

Just curious to know if any one has an idea on what went wrong on my old system. I was running XP, & I knew the system was on its last legs. A little bit b4 I built my new system, the old one started to give me the "NTLDR is missing" error whenever I needed to reboot it, or when it randomly decided to reboot on its own. I was able to work around this problem by going into the "boot from" menu & tell it which drive it needed to boot from, even though the right drive was always highlighted as the boot drive.
Just kinda curious to know thoughts on why this started to occur, other than the obvious one that I knew the system was about to completely crash (it was a VERY old system I built many, many years ago).
Thanks!

neieus · Jan 17, 2014

I'm not sure how or why that happened but the best way to resolve that would be to install Windows on top of its self. This will allow you to replace the missing files and you won't lose anything in the process.

Saga Lout · Jan 18, 2014

I've come across this problem five times in the last week on comuters owned by different customers and I believe a Windows update may have caused it. My standard fix would be to use a Linux LiveCD to boot the machine then float a copoy of NTLDR into the root of C:\ then restart then it's job done and XP usually starts properly.

However, this last week or so, the message then changes to NT DETECT is not present so I have to repeat the process and when I look more carefully, I find everything else is also adrift so I then have to make copies of the following and put them on a flash drive in a folder I name NT Stuff:-

BOOT.INI
Config.sys
IO.sys
MSDOS.sys
NTDETECT.COM
NTLDR

When I copy those from the flash drive into the root of C:\ and restart, XP runs normally.

I hate to think this issue is connected to the EOS of XP in April.

thefatherofzen · Jan 20, 2014

iknowhowtofixit :

thank you for your response... this is what I figured was happening...

I have built a new system using current, up-to-date hardware... I purchased an IDE to SATA Bi-directional adapter to do just what you suggested, & while I was able to get my main OS "master" boot drive to come up on my new system & xfered the data, I can't seem to get it to do the same for my two old "slave" drives (which was odd to me since I thought it was my master drive having the issues - hell maybe it was the others as well)... You mentioned a "dock" - if you have any recommendations as to what would be good to try/use, it would greatly be appreciated, as I would hate to lose the data on the other 2 drives...

again, thank you

Saga Lout · Jan 21, 2014

Three dead drives in one box? That's a coincidence.

A dock is a piece of equipment that accepts your hard disk and uses a USB connector to slave that disk to the system and allow you to transfer data. Here's an example from my local e-Bay site http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dynamode-USB-HDK-CR-USB2-0-SATA-Hard-Disk-Dock-Supports-2-5-3-5-Hard-Disks-/360612672731?pt=UK_Computing_Other_Computing_Networking&hash=item53f630b4db

but others are available, some allow PATA, SATA and 2.5 connectors.

In your circumstances, it's better to work with the equipment you have to get those drives working. Do they show in BIOS at boottime? Are they PATA or SATA? Is there a BIOS setting named AHCI and if so, what is the setting?

FJSelf · Jan 21, 2014

Saga Lout :

The same happened to me last week after installing Net.Framework 3.5 SP1.
Full story here:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1988989/ntldr-missing-press-ctrl-alt-canc-restart.html

quietech · Jan 27, 2014

I have now run into this issue on four computers.

Here is the exact procedure I followed to repair this issue.

Boot to your Windows XP disk. Enter Recovery Console. At the command prompt, type in copy d:\i386\ntldr c:\ then press enter. Then type copy d:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\ then press enter. Of course, replace the drive letters shown previously with your own if you operating system differs from C or your CD drive differs from D.

Next, type at the command prompt: bootcfg /rebuild then press enter. Wait for it to scan for installations. When it prompts "Add installation to boot list?" type Y then press enter. When it prompts for load identifier, type in the EXACT name of your OS, such as "Windows XP Professional" or "Windows XP Home Edition", then press enter. At the final prompt for OS Load Options, type in /Fastdetect then press enter.

Type exit, then enter, which will restart the computer.

Windows should be back up and running!

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NTLDR is missing

thefatherofzen

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neieus

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Saga Lout

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thefatherofzen

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FJSelf

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