Ntldr is misssing in Vista

[Guest]

I just did a clean Vista Home Premimum installl using the woraround on a new
self built computer. When I went to format both drives I was hung. Upon
investigation I found that there is a problem in Vista that will not
recognize two hard drives that are the same size. I have two Seagate 320 gig
perpendicular drives (jumper correctly). When I disconnected the slave, the
install went fine no problems. After the install, I added the slave drive and
the computer hangs. When I take it out it boots normally. When it hangs I get
the "NTLDR is missing" error message. I am unable to boot up under any jumper
change so IT IS NOT THE JUMPERS. I have seen other posts regarding this issue
in XP. I have not attempted any of these fixes as I am not sure if there
would be any difference in the fixes from XP to Vista. Since I cannot boot
the system when the 2d drive is added, it makes it impossible to effect the
fixes unless I go to a system running XP. Has anyone heard of the problem
before. All updates to vista are installed. I am running:

Foxconn AM2 CS1XEM2AA MOBO
AMD FX 62 Processor
Corsair matched memory DDR2 -800
e-GeForce 8600 GTS
Soundblaster X-Fi Platium
Silencer 750W PSU
Windows Vista Home Premimum.

Thanks!

Gee

 

[Richard Urban]

I have seen this problem on numerous computers and have solved the condition
as such.

In each case I have found that the 2nd hard drive had a boot flag flipped -
even though there was no bootable system on the drive. This likely occurs
because at one time there "was" a primary and active partition on the drive
(a bootable operating system).

How I cured the problem:

I booted up the computer from an Acronis boot CD containing their Disk
Director suite. By examining the drive properties I saw that a partition on
the second drive had a boot "tick" displayed. I removed this tick from the
box. I then removed the boot CD and rebooted the computer.

Problem gone.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[Guest]

Hello Richard

Thank you for yourespose. It makes sense but both drives were brand new out
of the box. The only thing I attempted on the drive was a format from within
Vista on the initial install. Additionally I do not have the Acronis Suite.

If I format this drive using XP would I be able to then transfer the drive
to Vista without issues?

Gee

 

[Richard Urban]

Formatting will not change things. You can try to delete all partitions on
the second drive, then create a new partition and format same. But I seem to
remember that this didn't work either. The boot flag is, I believe, out of
the normal boundaries that are touched under normal use.

Your problem can also be caused by having a 2nd drive (IDE) attached when
installing to your primary SATA drive. I don't know if this applies to you
though.

It does sound like the boot flag is tripped on the second drive. But, not
finding any boot files you receive the message Ntldr is missing.

As I said, I have found this problem numerous times and have been able to
consistently correct for it. But you need the same, or equivalent software
to correct the problem.

No! I am not aware of an equivalent.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)