NTLDR is missing

[Andy Kriger]

I have Win2KPro installed on a pair of 6G HDs striped together. I was trying
to install a larger HD in my system but my motherboard is so old, it could
not recognize the new Western Digital 120G HD. Following the WD
instructions, I installed EZ-BIOS from the Western Digital floppy disk. I
was still unable to get Win2K propertly installed on the new HD, so I
uninstalled EZ-BIOS from 6G HDs. Now I get the 'NTLDR is missing' message on
startup. I do not have an Emergency Repair Disk and the Win2K Setup Repair
options cannot detect my existing installation. I cannot get the Western
Digital floppy to boot ('Bad or missing command interpreter' and typing
command.com at the prompt doesn't work).

I filed a request for the Bcupdate2 utility and am waiting to hear from MS
support on this. However, I am impatient (since this pretty scary to lose my
HDs like this), so I'm wondering what my options are.

Will a fresh install of WinNT on another drive be able to understand the
striping and read the data off those drives? Is it possible to repair the
damage EZ-BIOS apparently did?

Any advice or reassurance would be appreciated and I'm happy to answer any
questions that might help you help me.

thx
andy

 

[KR]

NTLDR is Short for NT Loader, a program loaded from the
hard drive boot sector that displays the Microsoft Windows
NT startup menu and helps Windows NT load.

Often one would see this message "NTLDR is Missing" after
attempting to install Windows 2000 or Windows XP, or
upgrade a Windows 95-based or Windows 98-based computer to
Windows 2000 or Windows XP (not sure if this is the case
for you though). The message appears after the first
reboot. This usually occurs only if Windows 95 or 98 has
been installed on a drive with the FAT32 file system.

I had this happen to me after an upgrade from Me to XP.

To typically correct the problem, you must boot the
computer with a Windows 95 or 98 Startup diskette or
another bootable diskette with sys.com on it. Then, at
the "A:\>" prompt, type "sys c:" and press "enter."
A "System Transferred" prompt should appear and then you
must reboot the computer without the diskette.

Hope this helps, if not try a google search

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I do not think it is a good idea to boot with a Win98 boot
diskette and execute the "sys c:" command, for these
reasons:

- If the system partition is FAT32, the "sys" command will
destroy the Win2000 boot sector. The OP will no longer
be able to boot into Win2000 (although the pesky "ntldr"
message will disappear . . .).

- If the system partition is NTFS, the command will not work
at all, because Win98 does not recognise NTFS partitions.

Furthermore, the message "NTLDR is missing" has nothing
to do with "Win98 being installed on a FAT32 partition", as
you claim. It simply means that the disk has a Win2000
boot sector and that the code stored in the boot sector is
unable to locate c:\ntldr. The problem must be corrected
by placing the file ntldr where it belongs.

 

[Guest]

I followed your directions.
* When I start Win98 from boot disk, I get a message that
drive C does not contain a valid FAT or FAT32 partition.
* ntfsdos cannot find any ntfs partitions
* fisk shows both fixed drives
drive 1 has a 2G and a 4G Non-DOS partition
drive 2 has a 6G Non-DOS partition

There's a KB article (Q121517) about repairing a corrupt
boot sector in WinNT. In that they say there's a duplicate
copy of the boot sector elsewhere on the volume. Is there
any chance that also applies to Win2K?

Still holding out hope that there's a way out of this mess.

Thanks for you help.
Andy

 

[Guest]

a little more info. i was able to run Norton Diskedit and
see the disk and data on the disk. if i recall correctly,
the boot partition isn't striped so maybe somewhere in
there is the right boot info and there's a way to
resurrect it?

thx again
andy