NTLDR is missing.....wtf?

[Tim.T]

I shutdown the previous night and there were no signs of a problem; I booted
up this morning and it gave the message "NTLDR is missing, press
ctrl+alt+del to restart". Just like that! Aint XP swell!!

I have 5 partitions, and Windows is installed in it's own, C:. Prior to this
cockup, all partitions were NTFS, but this time I decided to format C: in
FAT32 (is this a better option?) For some reason C: always seems to have
issues around the MBR or something, especially while it was NTFS, and yet
the other NTFS partitions have never caused any problems.

This is a brand new pc and I have not upgraded from windows 95, 98 or 2000.
Nor have I used third-party software to clone an old
hard drive, as described in this Microsoft article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;314057

I have copied both the boot.ini, ntdetect.com, and ntldr files to a floppy,
but I've read that other people have
tried this with no effect.

Now I'm more or less back to normal, but I'd like to know:

a)what exactly can cause this error
b)what should I do in preparation in case it happens again
c)how can I stop it happening again

I'm beginning to have a love/hate relationship with XP! I've barely gone a
month without some catastrophic
failure occuring somewhere on this damn thing.

Tim

 

[Tim.T]

I should mention that there were no disks in the floppy drive at the time I
got this message.

Tim

 

[Erik]

Did you edit the boot.ini file?

"partition(x)" should indicate the partition on which the
system files are.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft
Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect


.....

If nothing else works;

run fixdisk /mbr

good luck.

 

[Tim.T]

I never touch the Boot.ini file. This is what it looks like now, and how it
was before the error:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect

I used msconfig to check the boot.ini paths and it came out OK.

When you say "fixdisk" don't you mean "fixmbr" via the Recovery Console? I
tried that, and fixboot too.

Tim

Did you edit the boot.ini file?

"partition(x)" should indicate the partition on which the
system files are.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft
Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect


....

If nothing else works;

run fixdisk /mbr

good luck.

-----Original Message-----
I should mention that there were no disks in the floppy drive at the time I
got this message.

Tim
of a problem; I
booted own, C:. Prior to
this windows 95, 98 or
2000. ntldr files to a
floppy,


.