NTLDR is missing

[Tim]

I get "NTLDR is missing, press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart..."
when I start my PC. OS is XP home. It was working fine, I
haven't installed any HW or SW.
Here's what I did so far trying to fix it:

- made sure HDD (IBM 80GB)is OK, connecting to another PC
as a slave. I could get into the HDD.
- disconnected all the Disk drives from motherboard
leaving only the HDD, and replaced the cable between the
HDD and motherboard - it came up with the same error.
- the strangest thing is my HDD is recognized as a slave
in BIOS. I hadn't change anything in the BIOS and jumper
settings on the HDD.
Master HDD is set to 'Auto', but it still cannot detect
the HDD as a master only a slave.
I'm confused, help me...

 

[Nictu]

It could be a motherboard failure. If the BIOS is seeing
it as a slave then it wont boot. The ntldr file has to be
found in the mbr of the primary disk or else it comes up
with this error. You could try resetting the bios to
factory defaults within the bios itself and then see if it
finds the hdd as primary master.