NTLDR is missing

[Bob Vinton]

Recently my computer (with XP Home Ed.) freezes or shuts down on its own. I
restart & it used to reboot OK & be OK for a while. But today when the
problem reccurred when I restarted I got the message "NTLDR is missing -
press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart". The 'Intel Board ---- Pentium 4 etc." page
came up but after a minute or so it went away & a message said "Boot
failure: System Halted". I repeated this process several times, then the
computer rebooted & things seemed to be OK. But only a short while later the
computer froze again & I restarted again & it seemed to be OK. But 1 minute
later it froze again & I restarted again. This time it is working OK enough
so far to do this message. But what is the real problem & how do I fix it.?

All help will be much appreciated.

Bob

 

[Greg Palmer]

As a guess I would say that your Hard Drive is failing. Three things I would
do in this situation.

1) When in Windows click on Start > Right Click My Computer > Select
Properties > Click on the Advanced Tab > Under the Startup and Recovery
heading click the settings button > Untick the "Automatically Restart" box >
Click Ok > Click Ok

Now if there is an error you should receive a blue screen with error
details - if you do note down what it says.

2) Go to the website of the manufacturer of your Hard Drive - they will have
a free diagnostic application that you can run to check your HD for errors.

3) If that does not show anything then start the Recovery Console and run
the chkdsk command as per http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/EN-US/
"chkdsk /r"

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Re-extract the files 'NTLDR' and 'ntdetect.com' again, from the XP CD. (CD
Boot - Recovery Console Prompt)

copy D:\i386\NTLDR C:\

copy D:\i386\NTDETECT.COM C:\

where D: is the setup cd drive

 

[KDB Systems]

Sometimes bad ram can cause this. Have you recently added any ram or other
new hardware?

Kerry Brown
KDB Systems

 

[Bob Vinton]

Thanks Greg Palmer & Mark Ferguson for your responses. Right now the problem
seems to have resolved itself, so I have not yet tried the things you guys
suggested.

I have a vague understanding of the problem (apparently a MS known problem)
after finding MS Article ID 320397. I don't understand all the tech stuff
about root folders & boot volumes & file systems & allocation indexes. I
have two HDDs - 'C' uses FAT32 & 'D' uses NTFS. 'C' is not fragmented; 'D',
which I don't use much yet, I know is very fragmented. So I guess that
something got confused on the 'D' NTFS files. I'm going to defragment 'D'.

The above Article, under 'Resolution', refers to a 'Bcupdate2 utility'. As
usual, MS won't supply me (even though it is a MS known problem), & MS
refers me to the OEM. I have emailed the OEM (MDG Canada). Previous
experience with MDG has not been good.

Re HDD diagnostic applications, I have emailed Samsung for info because I
could not find the info on their website.

Again thanks for your help to date & I'll keep you informed of developments.

Bob Vinton

 

[Bob Vinton]

Thanks. I used suggestions 1) & 3). 2) turned out to be a bit complicated
for me. The Recovery Console did the trick, I think.

I used CHKDSK /r to check my 'C' & 'D' HDDs. 'C' with FAT32 was OK. 'D' with
NTFS did in fact have problems - "CHKDSK found and fixed one or more errors
on the volume". After subsequent boots & reboots everything is running
smoothly.

So hopefully I'm 'fixed' & you were right about a possible HDD problem.

Thanks again, Bob Vinton