NTLDR is compressed - need help

[John]

A friend asked me to have a look at his computer because it wouldn't boot
and gave the message "NTLDR is missing. Press ctrl, alt, del to restart your
computer".

I booted from the XP CD and used the Win XP Pro Recovery Console, going
through restoring the NTLDR and ntdetect.com files, then repairing and even
replacing the boot.ini and I'm now getting the message "NTLDR is compressed.
Press ctrl, alt, del to restart".

Not quite understanding what was going on and going round in circles, I rang
my friend who told me that he had compressed the hard drive because he was
getting short of space. He said that he got a fair bit of free space by
compressing the drive but that he's been getting a warning message for about
a week now, telling him that he is getting very short of disk space again -
this is on a 40GB drive with a single partition, that of course, being the
system drive (

What can I do now folks? I'm assuming that if I was to decompress the drive
I would lose a lot of his data. I've never dealt with compressed drives
before, so.... help!

Thanks in advance,

John

 

[jim]

As I see it, his data is dead anyway. If buying a new, larger drive is not
in the cards, I'd boot from a Bart's PE disk, connect an external drive to
the PC and move as much data as possible to the external drive. Then, I'd
uncompress the drive and advise your friend to buy a larger drive.

Of course, you could just buy a new, larger drive and use the included
software to copy the old drive over to the new, larger drive and then
uncompress it....either way he's hosed now so there's not much to lose.

jim

 

[philo]

A friend asked me to have a look at his computer because it wouldn't boot
and gave the message "NTLDR is missing. Press ctrl, alt, del to restart your
computer".

I booted from the XP CD and used the Win XP Pro Recovery Console, going
through restoring the NTLDR and ntdetect.com files, then repairing and even
replacing the boot.ini and I'm now getting the message "NTLDR is compressed.
Press ctrl, alt, del to restart".

Not quite understanding what was going on and going round in circles, I rang
my friend who told me that he had compressed the hard drive because he was
getting short of space. He said that he got a fair bit of free space by
compressing the drive but that he's been getting a warning message for about
a week now, telling him that he is getting very short of disk space again -
this is on a 40GB drive with a single partition, that of course, being the
system drive (

What can I do now folks? I'm assuming that if I was to decompress the drive
I would lose a lot of his data. I've never dealt with compressed drives
before, so.... help!

Thanks in advance,

John

Boot from the XP cd and go to the recovery console

then issue the command : fixboot

That should do the trick.

If not, pop the drive into another machine and backup the data

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "John" <[email protected]>

| A friend asked me to have a look at his computer because it wouldn't boot
| and gave the message "NTLDR is missing. Press ctrl, alt, del to restart your
| computer".
|
| I booted from the XP CD and used the Win XP Pro Recovery Console, going
| through restoring the NTLDR and ntdetect.com files, then repairing and even
| replacing the boot.ini and I'm now getting the message "NTLDR is compressed.
| Press ctrl, alt, del to restart".
|
| Not quite understanding what was going on and going round in circles, I rang
| my friend who told me that he had compressed the hard drive because he was
| getting short of space. He said that he got a fair bit of free space by
| compressing the drive but that he's been getting a warning message for about
| a week now, telling him that he is getting very short of disk space again -
| this is on a 40GB drive with a single partition, that of course, being the
| system drive (
|
| What can I do now folks? I'm assuming that if I was to decompress the drive
| I would lose a lot of his data. I've never dealt with compressed drives
| before, so.... help!
|
| Thanks in advance,
|
| John
|

It is possible that the file NTLDR was restored but was restored with the NTFS Compression
attribute and the OS doesn't like it.

Put the drive in another WinXP PC as a "D:" drive and examine the disk.

Files that have the Compression Attribute will show in Explorer in Blue. Normal files and
folders will be Black.

Change the attribute on NTLDR and ntdetect.com back from Compressed to un-compressed.

Then put the hard disk back in its own PC and reboot it.

 

[John]

I sort of thought that might be the case. Thanks Jim

John

 

[John]

Boot from the XP cd and go to the recovery console

then issue the command : fixboot

That should do the trick.

If not, pop the drive into another machine and backup the data

Already done that but no luck - thanks anyway philo.

John

 

[John]

It is possible that the file NTLDR was restored but was restored with
the NTFS Compression attribute and the OS doesn't like it.

Put the drive in another WinXP PC as a "D:" drive and examine the
disk.

Files that have the Compression Attribute will show in Explorer in
Blue. Normal files and folders will be Black.

Change the attribute on NTLDR and ntdetect.com back from Compressed
to un-compressed.

Then put the hard disk back in its own PC and reboot it.

Ah, right, thanks very much David. I'll give that a try tomorrow and see
what happens. Cheers mate,

John

 

[John John]

To "decompress" ntldr simply boot to the Recovery Console and issue the
following commands (pressing <Enter> after each):

CD \
ATTRIB -C NTLDR

John

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "John John" <[email protected]>

| To "decompress" ntldr simply boot to the Recovery Console and issue the
| following commands (pressing <Enter> after each):
|
| CD \
| ATTRIB -C NTLDR
|
| John
|

John:

You always have *GOOD* information.

I was unaware the ATTRIB command in the Recovery Console can decompress as well as change
the standard attributes (R, S, H and A)

 

[John]

Thanks very much for that John, it'll save me the hassle of getting the
drive out of the faulty machine and putting it in mine )

John

 

[John]

Thanks very much for that John, it'll save me the hassle of getting
the drive out of the faulty machine and putting it in mine )

John

Well, thanks very much to David for suggesting it in the first place, and
thanks to John John for telling me an easier way. Decompressing NTLDR using
John's method worked wonderfully and the computer now boots OK. Mind you,
windows is reporting just 28.7MB (yes, that's MB, not GB )) free space on
the drive. I haven't got a clue how it's working anyway with such a low
amount, so my friend is being told that as a matter of extreme urgency he
has to get himself a new HDD )

Thanks again,

John

 

[John John]

Well, thanks very much to David for suggesting it in the first place, and
thanks to John John for telling me an easier way. Decompressing NTLDR using
John's method worked wonderfully and the computer now boots OK. Mind you,
windows is reporting just 28.7MB (yes, that's MB, not GB )) free space on
the drive. I haven't got a clue how it's working anyway with such a low
amount, so my friend is being told that as a matter of extreme urgency he
has to get himself a new HDD )

Thanks again,

You're welcome, thanks for the follow up.

John

John