NTLDR is missing??????

[Guest]

MY old HDD configurationn was a IDE HDD and a SATA HDD in a dual boot configuration with XP on both the IDE was the main drive. I replaced the IDE HDD with a new SATA HDD i booted up and my bios recognises both drives then I installed vista on my new drive and after it finished i tried to boot and got the error message NTLDR is missing and have no idea what to do. I thought it may have somthing to do with the fact that niether drive is recognised as a primary disk but 0 secondary and 1 secondary any advice would by welcome.

 

[mouse29982]

ahh im lazy and half read your post
check to make sure your booting off the right drive
change your boot options
try the xp one then try the vista one...

 

[mrintense2]

put in the disk and repair my son had the same problem last week

 

[wavebossa]

Lol, dont put it in repair because it's not broken. NTDLR is missing is an archaic way of saying, "Where is your OS"

You cannot boot. Let me tell you why. Your IDE had your boot file on it. Even though you dualbooted, you IDE had the actual file. You need to put back in your ide, and copy that file to your SATA.

Easy as pie, good luck.

 

[bf2gameplaya]

I'm not precisely sure what you did, but you are reporting Vista is trying to boot from a non-boot partition on that new SATA drive (which was a booting IDE drive).

The primary/secondary issue has no bearing, but boot order does and many mobos do not treat all SATA ports the same so perhaps you need to make sure the boot drive is in a boot SATA port, the BIOS is looking to that port first and make sure that your 2nd drive has had all the XP boot files erased, so that there is no OS confusion which HDD can and should boot.

 

[Guest]

Lol, dont put it in repair because it's not broken. NTDLR is missing is an archaic way of saying, "Where is your OS"

You cannot boot. Let me tell you why. Your IDE had your boot file on it. Even though you dualbooted, you IDE had the actual file. You need to put back in your ide, and copy that file to your SATA.

Easy as pie, good luck.

thank you very much but where would i find the boot file one the HDD?

 

[wavebossa]

bf2gameplaya, i think it's just a simple case of "2 OS on 2 drives, but only one boot file"

 

[wavebossa]

@Cashmere,

Put back in your IDE, enable veiwing of system files and hidden files. It should be in C:\ (just like that, in your C drive).

It will be called boot.ini. Copy that to what will be your new C: drive (the one that has an OS on it.

And your ready. In some cases boot.ini needs editing, but yours should not.

 

[Guest]

@Cashmere,

Put back in your IDE, enable veiwing of system files and hidden files. It should be in C:\ (just like that, in your C drive).

It will be called boot.ini. Copy that to what will be your new C: drive (the one that has an OS on it.

And your ready. In some cases boot.ini needs editing, but yours should not.

is there any specific place i need to put the file on the new HDD?

 

[wavebossa]

yeah, C:\

just straight up C:\

 

[Guest]

yeah, C:\

just straight up C:\

kk thanks

 

[Guest]

ive keep your advice and moved boot.ini to my other drive D, but im still getting the message as soon as i unplug the IDE

 

[wavebossa]

alrite, as long as the boot ini is there, your good. Now its just a matter of making your D:\ Drive you new C. And to do this, you must go to your bios and make SATA read as IDE.

After that, jut play around with cable configuration and boot order until it works. Plug your old D (soon to be C) drive in SATA 0 master. The other one can go wherever.

 

[rabidbunny]

Ok, i had the same issue on an emachines computer. All i had to do is take the drive out, connect it to my pc, uncompress the drive, and reinstall. worked magically

For some reason the NTDLR thing is about compression on the drive. Idk what will work in your situation, but that's how i fixed it in my case.

 

[Guest]

alrite, as long as the boot ini is there, your good. Now its just a matter of making your D:\ Drive you new C. And to do this, you must go to your bios and make SATA read as IDE.

After that, jut play around with cable configuration and boot order until it works. Plug your old D (soon to be C) drive in SATA 0 master. The other one can go wherever.

im sorry im a bit of noob how do i make the SATA read as IDE? and how do i know which lead is SATA 0 master/primary will there be code on the side of it?

 

[wavebossa]

@Rabidbunny, it's asking for the file. NTDLR is the first of many files it will ask for. If you just arbitrarily put it on a drive, it will ask for other system files.

@Cashmere. SATA properties should be in your bios somewhere. You'll just have to look for it. As for SATA 0, it should say right by the connector. You may need a flashlight to see it.

 

[wavebossa]

or you can just play a little game of trail an error.

I mean, how many SATA do you have? 4? just use your D drive (the one with the boot.ini) and try em all.

 

[mrintense2]

Im not the sharpest cookie in the jar. But i think it would have been easier for this young man to just repair his boot file with the disk. That way he wouldnt have to move it himself, seeing that if he knew how to do that he wouldnt be asking for help. My son had the same problem last week and all i did was a repair and hes been working fine .

 

[wavebossa]

Im not the sharpest cookie in the jar. But i think it would have been easier for this young man to just repair his boot file with the disk. That way he wouldnt have to move it himself, seeing that if he knew how to do that he wouldnt be asking for help. My son had the same problem last week and all i did was a repair and hes been working fine .

oh thats what you mean, lol. When i read your first message i thought you meant put in a shop. My bad. yeah if he has one, its def a good a idea. But what he's done so far should work.

 

[bf2gameplaya]

bf2gameplaya, i think it's just a simple case of "2 OS on 2 drives, but only one boot file"

I thought that at first, but I also thought that he would have figured that little glitch out on his own and then went with the next easiest thing!

So far it looks like it's neither! I'm curious how he had the dual-boot feature configured...and which OSes, he never did say.

 

[wavebossa]

I'm curious as to how he had his dual boot set up as well. Maybe i should just write him a new one...

 

[Guest]

basically i had originally one HDD running on vista and was sick of its problems so installed a XP HDD IDE drive as well so i could have a more dependable OS this worked fine but i got bored of Vista problems so formated the HDD and then installed XP on it which worked fine.