For a friend - PC Crashed

[Peter]

A friend of mine has a problem... here is an excerpt from two messages:

Due to a sequence of actions I did last night, I can no longer boot up. It
sticks on the first boot screen (the DOS one) saying "NTLDR is missing. Hit
any key to continue". Hitting any key or re-booting doesn't let me continue.

Does anyone know what NTLDR is referring to? If so, how can I re-install it?
Well it looks like I'm screwed - to get into the recovery console it asks
for an administrator password. I never put one in and hitting return doesn't
work. After 3 tries it restarts and I'm back at square one.
I tried the new install, but I never get a screen offering to repair
anything. It wants to overwrite whatever is there and states I will lose all
data and anything in the My Documents folder, as well as elsewhere

Anyone any ideas?

 

[Rich Barry]

Peter, first thing to check is a floppy in the A: drive. That will give
you the message. The recovery console always asks for
a password but if you never had any then just continue with the process.
Here are two sites that a very helpful
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;314058
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

 

[Peter]

Thanks, I'll pass that on. It's a bit difficult acting as a relay!!