Computer will not boot from hdd or cd

[David]

A friend gave me his old computer but first he deleted some files. Now it
will not boot. The message is " NTLDR is missing Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to
restart." After fixing the boot order to "CD", "A", "HDD", I tried a winxp
CD and a debian CD, same message. I made a winxp boot floppy and included
BCUdate2 to fix the NTLDR error. The boot started but stopped with the
message that "HAL.dll" is missing. Is there any way to fix this with the
boot floppy?
I have done a number of google searches, read a lot, but most fixes other
than a winxp boot floppy required a CD and this computer will not boot from
a CD. I guess the next step is to download the winxp 6 disk home edition
utility and hope that gets me to the recovery console.

It might be a hardware problem but my friend does not think so. He deleted
files, rebooted, and got the NTLDR error.

Does anyone have a suggestion?

David

 

[Guest]

Why would one "fix" the boot order to cd-floppy-hd Do you want to boot
to a cd,or to a worthless floppy disk,....not Try setting hd 1st (the
OS),then
set the other junk if wanted.Also,are all the jumper pins on the IDE devices
set properly (hd,cdrom,etc),set as slave/master,dont use cable
select..Also,do
you own a windows xp cd,youre going to need one.Otherwise,youre running
a pc in someone elses name,+ if youre OS is wiped out,you'll need to boot
to cd,
install xp.Forget the xp floppy disks.......

 

[David]

I am not sure why you are posting this answer. When the computer came to
me, it would not boot. I looked at the boot order and it seemed OK but it
would not boot from the hdd, cd or a. I changed the order to see it that
would help. Then I deselected two of the three in rotation to see if that
would fix it. In a google search, I found a post where this fixed a
computer. Yes, I have a winxp virgin disk; however, I still can not boot in
hdd, cd, or a.

David

 

[milescomer]

Sounds like you friend might have just deleted the 3 boot files your
PC needs to find the windows installation. Hopefully we can make the
PC boot again and then fix it from the inside.
Pop on over to: http://ntldrismissing.com/
Make either the boot floppy or CD or USB, boot the PC, and run the
fixntldr.bat file from the inside.

If that doesn't fix it for you I have a follow up question:
You mentioned that this computer cannot boot from the CD drive. Why
not?

 

[David]

In my first post, I said that I made a winxp boot floppy but got the
"HAL.dll" missing error and wanted to know how to resolve that. I do not
know why the computer will not boot from the cd. I made the 6 disk floppy
setup utility set and used them to try and repair the OS with a winxp cd.
The cd ran and started the repair but stopped with a sp2.cab error. The
winxp disk has sp2 on it and maybe I downloaded the wrong setup version. I
am reluctant to do a new install until my friend finds his restore disks
with drivers and OS info. He does not know what is on the computer or what
he did to it.

David

 

[John Wunderlich]

In my first post, I said that I made a winxp boot floppy but got
the "HAL.dll" missing error and wanted to know how to resolve
that. I do not know why the computer will not boot from the cd.
I made the 6 disk floppy setup utility set and used them to try
and repair the OS with a winxp cd. The cd ran and started the
repair but stopped with a sp2.cab error. The winxp disk has sp2
on it and maybe I downloaded the wrong setup version. I am
reluctant to do a new install until my friend finds his restore
disks with drivers and OS info. He does not know what is on the
computer or what he did to it.

I don't know if this applies, but once I had a CD drive that wouldn't
boot. I took it out and found that there was a jumper on the back that
selected "Master", "Slave", or "Chain" mode. Both of my CD/DVD drives
were set to the "Chain" mode. I changed the jumpers to place one drive
as "Master" and the other as "Slave". After I did that, I was able to
boot from both of my drives.

Good Luck & HTH,
John

 

[David]

Thanks for the answer but the computer did boot from the cd drive before my
friend cleaned out the files.

David