Cabguy said:
Windows XP Home Edition SP2. On startup, I am getting the message
"ntldr is missing". My son thinks he moved the file to another
folder when he was moving his own files! I have the XP
re-installation disc, and have got as far as the prompt for
Administrator Password in the Repair menu, but I can't remember what
it is. Is there a way around this???
Check to see if their is a floppy in A drive if not......
NTLDR is missing?
From a newsgroup post by late Mr.Alex Nichol, Microsoft MVP:
The MBR code hands the boot on to the Active partition; the boot code in
that loads NTLDR. There are two cases:
"NTLDR not found" at all may arise because the incorrect partition has been
set as active. This can happen if you have a dual boot and have messed with
the files in that partition that boot; this is not the XP one, or have
shifted the boot to the XP partition which does not have NTLDR in it.
"NTLDR damaged" means what it says, the file is there but not working.
Either way, if you have a proper retail type XP CD, not some maker's
recovery disk:
Set the BIOS to boot CD before Hard Disk. Boot the XP CD and, instead of
Setup, take the immediate R for Repair. Assume any password requested is
blank, and TAB over. Assuming this sees the CD as D (likely) give:
COPY D:\i386\ntldr C:\
COPY D:\i386\ntdetect C:\
(a file that may also be missing)
then rebuild the boot configuration boot.ini file by
Attrib -H -R -S C:\boot.ini
(if not found skip the next line)
DEL C:\boot.ini
BootCfg /Rebuild
Other options>
Do not use the repair option in the recovery console,this link will explain
it.
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
This won't help you now, but once your system is up and running again do
this edit so the RC won't ask for a password in the future.
The recovery console needs the pasword for the person who installed XP, not
for just any administrator. If the install was done by a major PC maker,
you may need to contact them for it.
However, the password is sometimes blank. So, try just pressing enter when
you are asked for a password, it may help.
Or, if you can get into XP, even safe mode, you can arrange to bypass the
password by the following registry change:
Instead, just run REGEDIT (Start à Run à Regedit)Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Setup\Recover
yConsole
Set the DWORD SecurityLevel value to 1
http://www.theeldergeek.com/recovery_console.htm
I wish you luck!
P.S.
This is well worth the expence.
http://www.acronis.com/