"NTLDR is missing"

[davidjrosen]

I'm seeing one of these delightful "NTLDR is missing" bootup error
messages on a laptop.

I've followed the instructions given on various Websites meticulously,
but no joy.

I've successfully copied known-good copies of NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and
BOOT.INI to the root of C, to no effect.

I've run fixboot and fixmbr from the W2K CD (repair console) several
times, to no effect. Every time I run fixmbr, it tells me I have a
non-standard boot record, and asks me whether I want to replace it.
When I tell it to go ahead and replace, the laptop reboots, but still
no joy.

When I try doing using the emergency repair process, and get to the
point where I tell it I don't have an ERD and it should go ahead and
search for the W2K installation, it finds it without a problem, but
then when I tell it to execute the repair, I get the error message
"Setup cannot find or load the file."

One more interesting detail: when I attach a USB FDD to the laptop,
with a floppy on it containing nothing but NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and
BOOT.INI, the laptop can boot normally.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Steve Parry]

I'm seeing one of these delightful "NTLDR is missing" bootup error
messages on a laptop.

I've followed the instructions given on various Websites meticulously,
but no joy.

I've successfully copied known-good copies of NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and
BOOT.INI to the root of C, to no effect.

I've run fixboot and fixmbr from the W2K CD (repair console) several
times, to no effect. Every time I run fixmbr, it tells me I have a
non-standard boot record, and asks me whether I want to replace it.
When I tell it to go ahead and replace, the laptop reboots, but still
no joy.

When I try doing using the emergency repair process, and get to the
point where I tell it I don't have an ERD and it should go ahead and
search for the W2K installation, it finds it without a problem, but
then when I tell it to execute the repair, I get the error message
"Setup cannot find or load the file."

One more interesting detail: when I attach a USB FDD to the laptop,
with a floppy on it containing nothing but NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and
BOOT.INI, the laptop can boot normally.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

You've probably already looked at this but just in case you havent

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318728/

Also are you fairly sure you don't have a virus corrupting your boot sector
or a failing hard drive or BIOS battery?

 

[John John]

Is the drive set as active?

John

 

[davidjrosen]

You've probably already looked at this but just in case you havent

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318728/

Also are you fairly sure you don't have a virus corrupting your boot sector
or a failing hard drive or BIOS battery?

I have indeed looked at the Microsoft article; thanks. That's where I
got (most of) the things I've already tried.

Also are you fairly sure you don't have a virus corrupting your boot sector
or a failing hard drive or BIOS battery?

I will run some diagnostics on the HDD. However, the fact that it
boots and runs very normally when I have the aforementioned disk in the
FDD has been making me think it's okay.

The laptop's manufacture date is 8/04; other than that (and the deal
with the floppy disk again), I can't really vouch for the BIOS battery.
I did flash the BIOS to current during my attempts to fix this; I also
reset the BIOS settings back to factory default at one point. No good.

Ever since the business with fixmbr, I have been suspecting a virus,
but the laptop did have the Corporate Edition of Symantec Anti-Virus on
it. I know that's not dispositive, but I don't really know what else I
can do to check it. Especially if this is some sort of Really Bad
Virus from which Symantec didn't protect it and from which fixmbr can't
recover it.

Thanks again for your time and suggestions.

 

[davidjrosen]

Yes.

 

[davidjrosen]

Yes.

Thanks to you, too, for the assistance.

 

[John John]

After eliminating the battery or virus as Steve suggests, I would try a
parallel install.

John

 

[Stubby]

One more interesting detail: when I attach a USB FDD to the laptop,
with a floppy on it containing nothing but NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and
BOOT.INI, the laptop can boot normally.

Boot it up and copy those 3 files to C:\ . Be certain HDD0 is in the
boot order. Boot the system without the floppy. If it works, you're
home free. If not, i.e. boot from floppy works but boot from HDD
doesn't, you need to do more debugging.

My guess is the HDD controller is not being seen. Is it SATA or
something that requires you to install a driver?

 

[davidjrosen]

Boot it up and copy those 3 files to C:\ . Be certain HDD0 is in the
boot order. Boot the system without the floppy. If it works, you're
home free. If not, i.e. boot from floppy works but boot from HDD
doesn't, you need to do more debugging.

I'm sorry; I was unclear. I've done that - several times, actually,
because I just couldn't understand how it failed to fix this. But it
didn't.

My guess is the HDD controller is not being seen. Is it SATA or
something that requires you to install a driver?

IDE.

Thanks, though, for taking a look at my problem!

 

[Bob I]

You don't happen to have Norton products installed("Auto Protect
feature" or "Go Back" or the like)? GoBack is a nasty one for doing odd
things to the drive.

 

[davidjrosen]

No I don't, but thanks for the thought!

 

[KeithsMail]

Just a thought, but when you do boot successfully from the external, if you
look at the c:root do you see a lot of files (not folders) present (I can't
remember the exact amount but it was thousands in our case)?
We had a system where the application program wrote thousands of small image
files to the disk and the user forgot to specify a folder name. This has the
effect of pushing the ntldr file name up into an area which the boot process
can't access.
If this is the case then look out on the net for a program called bcupdate.
This patches the boot area somehow and makes the pc bootable again. (be
carful there are different versions for each O/S, get the wrong one and it
will appear to run and complete but won't fix the problem)
Just deleting the thousands of files didn't do the job, the ntldr had to be
"moved" in the file table by this program before we could reboot properly.
We spent ages looking for a virus and I don't recall a parallel install
worked because the file name for ntldr on the new boot was still out of
"reach" of the boot process.
Keith

 

[davidjrosen]

Interesting! I'll keep that in mind if I ever see this again.

A direct answer to your question would be: "no." However, the end user
did say that his problem arose as a consequence of deleting many small
files from the root of C:. So

I actually simply ended up Ghosting the machine with a new image, for
the sake of time. The end user is having to reinstall all his
non-standard apps; there were several of those, and that's really what
we were trying to avoid. But it's all moot now.

Thanks for the tip, though, and I'll keep bcupdate in the bag of
tricks!