C
Christopher R. Thompson
Hey... Sorry for all of the crossposts, but I wasn't sure who would be
interested. I see about 7,500 messages with the "NTLDR is missing"
problem. Nothing I could find said anything about how to fix it or what
is wrong.
My setup is ASUS P4P800SE MB 1 Gig Memory SATA ICH5 w/ 2ea Maxtor
6Y160M0 smart drives. The stupid CDROM won't boot up the XP install so I
copied all of the files from the cd onto another computer and then moved
the whole directory to one of hard drives with Win98SE running on the
opposite SATA channel and then ran the XP setup program.
Everything works great until I get to the second boot where the "NTLDR
is missing" message appears.
The problems began with the shipped drive geometry of cyl=317632 hd=16
spt=63 for a grand total of 320173056 sectors of 512 bytes for 164 Gig
each. In this configuration Dos FDISK partitions a maximum of 27 Gigs
each partition. I wanted two partitions on each drive of 80 gigs. I
don't exactly know why the hd number is important for LBA access, but
when I increased it to 256 I got my 80 gig partitions. With new geometry
of cyl=19852 hd=256 and spt=63 I was able to succesfully install Win98SE
into the boot partition. Then I copied the WinXP installation folder
onto the other boot partition and started the install. This was a "new"
install not a recommended "UPGRADE," and I asked for the advanced option
to select the drive and partition to install into at install time. The
install copied some files, rebooted into NT and then performed all of
the system checks and did more file copies and rebooted again. When the
boot failed I switched the bios to boot the other drive up, and checked
out the XP drive. All of the files were written to the partiion using
hd=256, but the partition table, or boot record I don't know which had
changed the number of heads to hd=255. NTLDR was there with all of the
rest of the bootup files, but the boot loader didn't know how to find
'em and none of the partitions were on cylinder boundaries anylonger.
I probably shouldn't say this here, but I used a linux box and the
sfdisk and fdisk utilities to change the geometry back to the original
settings. fdisk won't directly change geometry, but sfdisk will, and if
you just hit enter at the end of sfdisk it will make one big partition
out of the whole drive. Then you can come back to fdisk and repartition
back to the original settings without destroying any of the data inside
of the partitions. Switch the bios back to the XP drive, reboot and the
installation continues normally.
So I guess the moral of the story is "Don't use hd > 255!"
Hopefully someone else can figure out why this occurs and prevent it
from happening in future service packs.
Regards, C.T.
P.S.
For the Video People...
I can't seem to find my TVIEW installation
cd for my Brooktree 878 video card. I've been running the card on
Win98SE for several years, but XP doesn't seem to like the drivers on
the "new" installation for some reason. Something about a class
rejection. Any suggestions?
interested. I see about 7,500 messages with the "NTLDR is missing"
problem. Nothing I could find said anything about how to fix it or what
is wrong.
My setup is ASUS P4P800SE MB 1 Gig Memory SATA ICH5 w/ 2ea Maxtor
6Y160M0 smart drives. The stupid CDROM won't boot up the XP install so I
copied all of the files from the cd onto another computer and then moved
the whole directory to one of hard drives with Win98SE running on the
opposite SATA channel and then ran the XP setup program.
Everything works great until I get to the second boot where the "NTLDR
is missing" message appears.
The problems began with the shipped drive geometry of cyl=317632 hd=16
spt=63 for a grand total of 320173056 sectors of 512 bytes for 164 Gig
each. In this configuration Dos FDISK partitions a maximum of 27 Gigs
each partition. I wanted two partitions on each drive of 80 gigs. I
don't exactly know why the hd number is important for LBA access, but
when I increased it to 256 I got my 80 gig partitions. With new geometry
of cyl=19852 hd=256 and spt=63 I was able to succesfully install Win98SE
into the boot partition. Then I copied the WinXP installation folder
onto the other boot partition and started the install. This was a "new"
install not a recommended "UPGRADE," and I asked for the advanced option
to select the drive and partition to install into at install time. The
install copied some files, rebooted into NT and then performed all of
the system checks and did more file copies and rebooted again. When the
boot failed I switched the bios to boot the other drive up, and checked
out the XP drive. All of the files were written to the partiion using
hd=256, but the partition table, or boot record I don't know which had
changed the number of heads to hd=255. NTLDR was there with all of the
rest of the bootup files, but the boot loader didn't know how to find
'em and none of the partitions were on cylinder boundaries anylonger.
I probably shouldn't say this here, but I used a linux box and the
sfdisk and fdisk utilities to change the geometry back to the original
settings. fdisk won't directly change geometry, but sfdisk will, and if
you just hit enter at the end of sfdisk it will make one big partition
out of the whole drive. Then you can come back to fdisk and repartition
back to the original settings without destroying any of the data inside
of the partitions. Switch the bios back to the XP drive, reboot and the
installation continues normally.
So I guess the moral of the story is "Don't use hd > 255!"
Hopefully someone else can figure out why this occurs and prevent it
from happening in future service packs.
Regards, C.T.
P.S.
For the Video People...
I can't seem to find my TVIEW installation
cd for my Brooktree 878 video card. I've been running the card on
Win98SE for several years, but XP doesn't seem to like the drivers on
the "new" installation for some reason. Something about a class
rejection. Any suggestions?