ntldr is missing

[Ptobes]

There seems to be a lot of info on this problem, but none of the
solutions seem to fit my situation.
I recently invested in a new home pc; the hard drive on my old one was
getting painfully slow and the C: partition was almost bursting at the
seams, which had led to some minor corruption of files, tho nothing
critical.
I have some data on this old disk (sound files, video files, word &
excel stuff) which I want to retrieve before ditching it, but when I
hooked it up to the new machine via IDE it wouldn't boot at all (Disk
Boot Failure) and when I put it back in the old machine, I got "ntldr
is missing, press ctrl+alt+delete to continue". Pressing
ctrl+alt+delete did nothing.
I have tried some of the fixes mentioned in Groups, with the following
results (booting from the XP cd):
Pressing F8 doesn't work, so can't load Last Known Good Configuration.
Going thru Setup to get to Repair doesn't give me the Repair option.
Going into Recovery Console, it didn't want to accept any dos commands
except Exit, so couldn't copy ntldr from the cd.
I've also checked the appropriate Microsoft help files, but to no
avail.
I know the long-term outlook for this disk looks bleak, but all I want
to do is get it running long enough to copy off some files, then it
can self-destruct for all I care!
If anybody can set me on the right track (let me know if more info is
needed), I will be eternally grateful, tho not to the extent of money
or sexual favours!!
Toby

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Toby.

Does your new computer use the typical drive configuration? Two built-in
IDE controllers, each handling a master and a slave drive? Or does it have
SCSI, or RAID, or SATA, or even a PCI card with something like a Promise
controller?

The x86 BIOS always tries to boot from the first primary partition on the
first HD in the computer - unless you've changed the setting in CMOS. And
it "sees" the native IDE controller before it loads any add-on device
controller, such as SCSI or RAID. If there is no IDE drive, or none that
contains a bootable partition, the BIOS keeps going and finds the SCSI or
other device and boots from the HD connected to that. But, if you've been
booting from SCSI and then add an IDE drive, when the computer reboots, the
BIOS finds that old IDE HD and tries to boot from it before even looking for
the SCSI card and loading the SCSI BIOS. What WAS Drive C: is not Drive C:
on THIS boot. And things get fatally confused.

Even in the plain vanilla configuration, things can get confused if the CMOS
is set to boot from the wrong HD, or if the cables and jumpers are wrong.
Perhaps the jumpers or switches on your old HD are still set to Master.
Maybe your new computer uses Cable Select, rather than Master/Slave.

First, remove your old HD completely and check all those things. Then, with
only the new HD installed, boot into WinXP and run Disk Management. (On the
Run line, type: diskmgmt.msc) Use Disk Management to examine your new HD
and to specifically assign drive letters (including CD/DVD drives, etc.) as
you want them to stay. (Otherwise, WinXP will assign drive letters anew
each time it loads, applying its built-in algorithm to the drive/partition
line-up that it finds on THAT boot, which may be different from the previous
boot.)

When WinXP is running properly with only the single HD, shut down, add the
second HD (making sure the jumpers and cables are correct and that the CMOS
is still set to boot from the new HD) and reboot. Look in Disk Management
to see which letters have been assigned to which volumes on the old HD.
Either use these letters (it's only temporary) or change them to suit
yourself. Recover all the files you want from the old HD, then use Disk
Management to repartition and reformat it if you like.

RC

 

[Ptobes]

Many thanks for this detailed response.
Unfortunately, it's of no use. I managed to find a data recovery
download, ran it on my hard drive, and discovered that, without
wanting to sound too technical, the whole thing is completely fried!!
Thanks again.