NTLDR missing

[Guest]

System won't boot, only a black screen with "NTLDR" missing.
Tried XP-CD but it doesn't find windows on the system.
Can someone help me start windows ? Thanks

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

Try this:

Boot with your XP CD in the cd drive. Select 'To repair..' by pressing 'R'.
When in the Recovery Console type the following:

"copy X:\i386\ntldr C:\" - without the quotes. Where X is the letter of
your
CD drive and C is the letter of your system drive. Take the XP CD out
of the cd drive and reboot into XP normally.

--


Will Denny
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User
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[Guest]

I know this may sound silly but it happens often..... you havn't left a
floppy disk in the drive have you?????

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

Why would leaving a floppy in the drive generate that error message? The
floppy drive should be configured to boot last.

--


Will Denny
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User
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[XPUSER]

Well, if in fact the floppy drive is configured to boot first,
and despite what you may think, that is often the case;
and there is a non bootable floppy in the floppy drive,
it will generate just exactly the "ntldr is missing" error.

So Bell did raise a very valid question in Bell's post.

=====================================

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

I must re-iterate - the floppy drive should be configured to boot last!!
Then the error message can't attributed to the floppy. That setting will
also alleviate the possibility of a virus-infected floppy being left in the
drive by accident and infecting a system on boot-up.

--


Will Denny
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User
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[Ted Zieglar]

I believe that most any computer built recently enough to have come with XP
pre-loaded will boot from the optical drive first and the floppy drive last.

 

[Vanguard]

Hi

I must re-iterate - the floppy drive should be configured to boot
last!! Then the error message can't attributed to the floppy. That
setting will also alleviate the possibility of a virus-infected floppy
being left in the drive by accident and infecting a system on boot-up.

If the floppy were configured to boot last, you could never use it to
boot your system using a bootable floppy because, well, obviously the
hard drive is going to get used first and that's where most folks put
their operating system.

The floppy is still often used to boot a system. I don't go loading and
running an operating system when that is the partition for which I am
trying to save a drive image, so I boot using floppies to run the
imaging program. When you want to flash your BIOS, you use a bootable
floppy and run the flash program to load the .bin file into EEPROM
(yeah, I know there are Windows-mode flash programs but then anything
that hiccups within Windows - which is obviously not a rarity - would
interrupt the BIOS flash and leave you with a dead system).

 

[XPUSER]

All I was trying to point out was that MAYBE the
floppy drive is configured to boot in front of the
hard drive and MAYBE the user in question is
not aware of that and MAYBE there IS a non
bootable floppy in the floppy drive and MAYBE
it would be a good idea to check out that POSSIBILITY.
=======================================

 

[Will Denny]

Erm - if you need to boot from a floppy - a change in the BIOS would be
appropriate - yes/no?

--


Will Denny
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User
Please reply to the News Groups

 

[Guest]

PLease try these steps::---

To resolve this behavior, replace the Windows XP Ntldr and Ntdetect.com
files. Follow these steps:
============
Start the Recovery Console, type fixboot at the prompt, and then press ENTER.
If the Recovery Console does not appear, follow these steps:
Use one of the following methods to start the computer so that you can
access the file system of the boot partition:
Specify another operating system on the Boot menu.
Start from the Windows XP CD-ROM, and then at the Windows Setup screen,
press "R" to use the Recovery Console to repair the Windows installation.
Use a Windows NT 4.0 boot disk that also contains the Windows XP boot files.
If your boot partition is a basic disk that is formatted with the FAT file
system, use an MS-DOS boot disk.
Copy the Ntldr and Ntdetect.com files from the I386 folder on the Windows XP
CD-ROM to the root folder of your boot drive. The boot drive is typically
drive C.
If you are using MS-DOS to perform this file replacement, you may have to
remove the System attribute, the Read-only attribute, and the Hidden
attribute from the files by using the attrib command. To do this, type the
following lines at the MS-DOS command prompt, and then press ENTER after each
line:
attrib ntdetect.com -r -s -h
attrib ntldr -r -s -h