Message: NTLRD is Missing

[Troy]

This morning when my friend Troy woke up, his computer
screen was black with the message "NTLRD is missing". He
noticed last night the power had flickered on and off,
but he has a surge protector so I'm not sure if it's
related. Any idea when this message means or how to get
rid of it?

Thanks!

 

[Alex Nichol]

This morning when my friend Troy woke up, his computer
screen was black with the message "NTLRD is missing". He
noticed last night the power had flickered on and off,
but he has a surge protector so I'm not sure if it's
related. Any idea when this message means or how to get
rid of it?

It means that in trying to boot, the initial boot loader program on the
hard disk (ntldr) is not being found. Depending on how far the damage
has done, this may or may not be recoverable. But if you have a
'proper' retail type XP CD rather than a maker's recovery one, try this
Set the BIOS to boot CD before Hard Disk. Boot the XP CD and, instead
of Setup, take the immediate R for Repair. Assume any password
requested is blank, and TAB over.

Give
COPY D:\i386\ntldr C:\ntldr
which should copy that file back
CHKDSK /F C:
BootCfg /Rebuild

and see. If it does not work - resulting in a different error - you are
probably stuck and will have to reinstall