HD Probs??

[Pegasus [MVP]]

My mighty backup PC, Asus MB 2.66 Pent 4 running XP Pro
has died. All of a sudden, as in overnight, it will not
boot from a HD.

Will boot from floppy and from CD just fine.

Try boot from HD and I get NTLDR not found, I get
Boot Image not found, or it just recycles to try to
reboot (unsuccessfully). Never actually boots.

I have flashed bios, replaced the IDE cable, tried
different HDs.

btw - all HDs boot successfully in a different pc.

What might this be? A bad HD controller on the MoBo??

thanks

chuck

How does your question relate to Windows? I would ask the experts in a
hardware newsgroup.

 

[Paul]

My mighty backup PC, Asus MB 2.66 Pent 4 running XP Pro
has died. All of a sudden, as in overnight, it will not
boot from a HD.

Will boot from floppy and from CD just fine.

Try boot from HD and I get NTLDR not found, I get
Boot Image not found, or it just recycles to try to
reboot (unsuccessfully). Never actually boots.

I have flashed bios, replaced the IDE cable, tried
different HDs.

btw - all HDs boot successfully in a different pc.

What might this be? A bad HD controller on the MoBo??

thanks

chuck

If your hard drive manufacturer provides a diagnostic
for hard drive testing, boot that test software and
test the hard drive. For example, Seatools for DOS is
available to test my Seagate drives, from the Seagate
site. I have a floppy with that software on it.

Paul

 

[chuck]

My mighty backup PC, Asus MB 2.66 Pent 4 running XP Pro
has died. All of a sudden, as in overnight, it will not
boot from a HD.

Will boot from floppy and from CD just fine.

Try boot from HD and I get NTLDR not found, I get
Boot Image not found, or it just recycles to try to
reboot (unsuccessfully). Never actually boots.

I have flashed bios, replaced the IDE cable, tried
different HDs.

btw - all HDs boot successfully in a different pc.

What might this be? A bad HD controller on the MoBo??

thanks

chuck

 

[Claire]

and you are MVP???
Of course it relates to Windows.
If you can boot from other devices and get that NTLDR message when booting
from hd it indicates that your Windows boot is corrupted.
Just reinstall your Windows and you will be fine, but all your data may be
lost depending on it's location.
Claire [not MVP]

 

[Michael]

My mighty backup PC, Asus MB 2.66 Pent 4 running XP Pro
has died. All of a sudden, as in overnight, it will not
boot from a HD.

Will boot from floppy and from CD just fine.

Try boot from HD and I get NTLDR not found, I get
Boot Image not found, or it just recycles to try to
reboot (unsuccessfully). Never actually boots.

I have flashed bios, replaced the IDE cable, tried
different HDs.

btw - all HDs boot successfully in a different pc.

What might this be? A bad HD controller on the MoBo??

thanks

chuck

Go into your BIOS and check the devices it's booting to. Make sure USB and
Network Device aren't listed at the top.


....and no, Clair. This isn't a Windows problem.

 

[LVTravel]

My mighty backup PC, Asus MB 2.66 Pent 4 running XP Pro
has died. All of a sudden, as in overnight, it will not
boot from a HD.

Will boot from floppy and from CD just fine.

Try boot from HD and I get NTLDR not found, I get
Boot Image not found, or it just recycles to try to
reboot (unsuccessfully). Never actually boots.

I have flashed bios, replaced the IDE cable, tried
different HDs.

btw - all HDs boot successfully in a different pc.

What might this be? A bad HD controller on the MoBo??

thanks

chuck

Did not change anything on the computer the night it died? New hard drive,
CD or the like?

It is possible that the Motherboard has died but if your onboard battery is
not holding bios information some computers will give this type of error.
This is an older computer and if the onboard battery has never been replaced
it may be worth a trip to the local store to purchase one. Open the case
with the power off and unplugged to see what type of battery is there. Write
down the number on the battery and take it to the store (Radio Shack, Best
Buy or even Staples type of store should have the battery as well as all Mom
& Pop type of computer stores. The replacement of the battery is easy.

Ensure that the bios is set to boot from the hard drive as the first item in
the list. As the computer is first booting wait for the bios to display the
hard drive statistics on the screen and press the Pause key to stop the boot
process at that point to enable you to read the entire screen. Your system
should identify the drive at least by the manufacturer. If it does not
after replacing the battery (and you said you have tried different HDs with
the same result) then the motherboard or controller is caput. If you happen
to have a PCI IDE controller card laying about you could insert that card to
see if you could get the computer to boot from that card with the HD plugged
into it. It would not be worth a purchase to try that however.

Others may also append additional information here to try and all should be
tried to get the computer working again.

Let us know what happens.

 

[chuck]

Paul wrote:
If your hard drive manufacturer provides a diagnostic

for hard drive testing, boot that test software and
test the hard drive. For example, Seatools for DOS is
available to test my Seagate drives, from the Seagate
site. I have a floppy with that software on it.

Paul

Thanks Paul, but I have 4 (countem four) hard drives that
all boot from a different pc, just not this one. But this
one boots fine from a floppy or CD. ?? Gonna look
for a hardware NG.

 

[chuck]

and you are MVP???
Of course it relates to Windows.
If you can boot from other devices and get that NTLDR message when booting
from hd it indicates that your Windows boot is corrupted.
Just reinstall your Windows and you will be fine, but all your data may be
lost depending on it's location.

Hey Claire, but as I said, all 4 HDs boot fine on a different
pc. Just not on this pc. I have swapped cables, flashed bios,
etc, to no avail. I do not believe this is a HD problem as they
work so well in other pcs.

 

[LD5SZRA]

Claire,

In future when you post something useful for us please remove
entire message posted by an MVP because some of us are allergic to
those three letter initials to signify Microsoft Valuable Pig.

Their knowledge is completely haphazard and without any
foundation! They think they know it all!.

hth

and you are MVPig???
Of course it relates to Windows.
If you can boot from other devices and get that NTLDR message when booting
from hd it indicates that your Windows boot is corrupted.
Just reinstall your Windows and you will be fine, but all your data may be
lost depending on it's location.
Claire

--
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KIND. LD5SZRA DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESSED OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. IN NO EVENT SHALL LD5SZRA
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INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, LOSS OF
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DAMAGES. SOME STATES DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR
LIMITATION OF LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL
DAMAGES SO THE FOREGOING LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY.

Copyright LD5SZRA 2010.

 

[Peter Foldes]

Claire

This is a hardware issue not a Windows XP one. You would be better to repost this to
the hardware newsgroup as per below link.
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware

--
Peter

Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

and you are MVP???
Of course it relates to Windows.
If you can boot from other devices and get that NTLDR message when booting from hd
it indicates that your Windows boot is corrupted.
Just reinstall your Windows and you will be fine, but all your data may be lost
depending on it's location.
Claire [not MVP]

How does your question relate to Windows? I would ask the experts in a hardware
newsgroup.

 

[ted]

Best advise is to google NTLDR is missing. Take a look at these

http://www.tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm

http://www.tech-pro.net/howto-fix-ntldr-is-missing.html

Ted

 

[chuck]

Sometimes now it starts to boot from the HD, then displays
the black screen with lots of text that lets me:
go to SAFE mode (with variations) or Start Windows Normally
in NN seconds. Seconds count down to 0 then pc reboots thru
bios and back to the Start Windows Normally in 25 seconds
screen.

Still will not boot to XP though.

 

[chuck]

Sometimes now it starts to boot from the HD, then displays
the black screen with lots of text that lets me:
go to SAFE mode (with variations) or Start Windows Normally
in 25 seconds.

If I select SAFE Mode, I get a whole scroll of lines that
begin with "MULTI (0) DISK ...", then it reboots to that
same screen. Never actually boots into an XP logo screen.
If I just let it run it will just continue to recycle thru
that same XP boot-select screen.

Doesn't that qualify this as an XP prob???

chuck

 

[Anna]

My mighty backup PC, Asus MB 2.66 Pent 4 running XP Pro
has died. All of a sudden, as in overnight, it will not
boot from a HD.

Will boot from floppy and from CD just fine.

Try boot from HD and I get NTLDR not found, I get
Boot Image not found, or it just recycles to try to
reboot (unsuccessfully). Never actually boots.

I have flashed bios, replaced the IDE cable, tried
different HDs.

btw - all HDs boot successfully in a different pc.

What might this be? A bad HD controller on the MoBo??

thanks

chuck

chuck:
Just to ensure we completely understand the problem you're experiencing...

When *any* of the five HDDs are installed in the "problem" PC none of them
are bootable and the "NTLDR not found" message appears every time during the
boot, right?. Yet you know at least four of those HDDs are non-defective
since they boot & function properly when installed in other systems. And you
tried the four HDDs on a one-by-one basis in the problem PC, right?

Needless to say you're certain you've correctly connected/jumpered each HDD
accordingly.

Again - the "NTLDR..." message *always* appears regardless of which HDD is
installed and booted to?

Re the "original" HDD...

Have you tried running a Repair install of the XP OS on that machine? Think
it might be worthwhile at this point to do so on the chance that the issue
involves a corrupted OS and the problem involving the other four HDDs not
booting on your "backup PC" stems from the fact they've been involved
(installed) in other systems?

Frankly, while it's of course conceivable, it doesn't sound (at least at
this point) that this is a hardware-related problem based on your
description of the problem. It might very well be so but I think I would
first try a Repair install of the OS. I assume you're familiar with the
process.
Anna

 

[Paul]

Paul wrote:
If your hard drive manufacturer provides a diagnostic

Thanks Paul, but I have 4 (countem four) hard drives that
all boot from a different pc, just not this one. But this
one boots fine from a floppy or CD. ?? Gonna look
for a hardware NG.

Since you say you can boot from a floppy, you can boot
for example, the Seatools for DOS floppy. The test program
will attempt to "find" your hard drive, and in the process,
may tell you whether the IDE controller is defective or not.

Another simple test to try, is enter the BIOS, and look at
the screen which identifies drives. The BIOS accesses the
drive at least once, and extracts a text string with the
name of the drive. if the name of the drive is mis-spelled,
or the characters are control characters or otherwise distorted,
that tells you a data bus bit on the IDE cable is bad.

Paul

 

[chuck]

Thanks for the response Anna.

There have been developments.

When I have the HD connected now and boot up, I get
the black screen with white letters that lets me
either Restart Windows Normally in 25 seconds,
or start in any of 3 varieties of SAFE more.

If I select SAFE Mode, I get a whole scroll of lines that
begin with "MULTI (0) DISK ...", then it reboots to that
same screen. Never actually boots into an XP logo screen.
If I just let it run it will just continue to recycle thru
that same XP boot-select screen.

If I choose Restart Windows Normally in 25 seconds,
the seconds count down to 0 then pc reboots thru
bios and back to the Start Windows Normally in 25 seconds
screen.

Still will not boot to XP though.

 

[HeyBub]

Hey Claire, but as I said, all 4 HDs boot fine on a different
pc. Just not on this pc. I have swapped cables, flashed bios,
etc, to no avail. I do not believe this is a HD problem as they
work so well in other pcs.

If they work in other PCs, the problem is not Windows related.

 

[Twayne]

In

and you are MVP???
Of course it relates to Windows.

But a hardware group cross-post might have been a good idea; it could be a
hardware problem.

If you can boot from other devices and get that NTLDR
message when booting from hd it indicates that your Windows
boot is corrupted.

Yup; that's what he said happens, on ONE machine, but not on others. Look
again, boots OK in another machine.

Just reinstall your Windows and you will be fine, but all
your data may be lost depending on it's location.

Waste of time since it boots up in another machine, which is "interesting",
I'd admit, but maybe they're identical machines & the registry isn't
completely hosed.

Personally, I think going to the hardware group and more information being
needed are the most effective things to follow up on. DID that drive
actually boot perfectly in another case or not? Then you know better which
routes to follow.

HTH,

Twayne`
Claire [not MVP]

 

[Twayne]

In

Hey Claire, but as I said, all 4 HDs boot fine on a
different pc. Just not on this pc. I have swapped cables,
flashed bios, etc, to no avail. I do not believe this is a
HD problem as they work so well in other pcs.

You mean they boot and are 100% operational and without error messages?
That's very unusual. At any rate, if that's really the case, I'd say a
rebuild of the hard drive is in order. If that fails, then it's going to be
hardware somehow. SMART is usually fairly good but that message you got
I've never seen.

HTH,

Twayne`

 

[Twayne]

In future when you post something useful for us please
remove entire message posted by an MVP because some of us
are allergic to those three letter initials to signify
Microsoft Valuable Pig.

So, what kind of pig are YOU, L? Not all MVPs are "bad", just most of the
ones that used to inhabit this group.