ntldr missing but it is there

[Beemer Biker]

I had a 6gb notebook disk start to go bad, symptom was
"/windows/system32/config/system" could not load. OK, I had a recent image I
had made when it was working, so I put the laptop disk on an adapter and
into a firewire box connected to my desktop and ran Acronis True Image 8 as
I had the image on my desktop.

I loaded the original image back onto the same laptop drive. It booted, but
scandisk was finding problems. I then went to my parts box and got a 6gb not
quite identical hard drive that had RH9 Linux on it that I knew was good. I
deleted the 3 linux partitions then installed that same XP image on the new
"old" laptop drive.

Sure enough,when I booted the Thinkpad I saw "grub", that left over boot
loader from linux. I then booted the XP Sp1a CD, put in R for repair and
ran fixmbr and fixboot thinking that would solve the problem. Rebooted and
got that "ntldr is missing"

I booted the XP SP1a cd, put in R for repair and poked around..

ntldr was there, so was ntdetect they were the correct size and date
boot.ini looked just fine.
I repeated this time specifying
fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0
fixboot c:\

OK, I still see "ntldr is missing, hit any key to reboot". I even pulled
the cd device out of the thinkpad. There is no floppy left in either. I
put the drive back into the adapter and looked at the drive from my desktop.
It was active, it had ntldr, it had ntdetect, did a file compare from fc/b
ntldr and ntdetect to \i386 and they matched. boot.ini was identical to my
desktop's boot..ini

OK, i started over. Deleted the single partition and re-installed the
image. Verifed it was active, put it back into the laptop. Same problem.
Then I booted the XP CD again and ran for a 3rd time:
fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0
fixboot c:\

same problem: "ntldr not present" When I put back in that "defective"
drive it boots just fine. Just the "new" drive wont. This is strange since
both were built using the same Acronis tool and that 2.5" firewire box.
Somehow linux and grub did something that fixmbr can solve????

when I ran fixmbr I do see a warning about non-standard mbr, but I see the
same warning on both laptop drives. One disk is hitichi (ibm) the other is
fujitsu and has no "ibm" label The one that was "ibm" and previously had
linux on it is causing the problem. However, that drive used to have
windows 98se on it and came out of another thinkpad. It should have worked.

...TIA.. for any help

 

[Timothy Daniels]

The partition containing the boot files must be a Primary partition
and it must be marked "active". Are both those conditions true?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Beemer Biker]

The partition containing the boot files must be a Primary partition
and it must be marked "active". Are both those conditions true?

Thanks Tim, AFAICT it is active because when it was attached to the external
firewire box, XP disk manager showed it as active on "G:" just like it shows
"C:" as active.

Maybe the Dell SP1a CD does not like the "thinkpad" or "ibm" in the bios. I
am going to try an OEM XP CD and use that to start an install of XP, then go
back to my Acronis true image and see the thinkpad can accept the already
activated image. I bought a couple of thinkpad "rebuilds" on ebay and am
replacing my old 800x600's non-speedsteps with relatively newer thinkpads
with speedstep cpus.

Question: the acronis image was of a fat32 6gb disk. The linux partition
on the "new" 6gb was linux. I wonder if the acronis true image install
could handle the change??? Doing an install of XP should remove all traces
of linux from the 6gb disk one would think.


--
=======================================================================
Beemer Biker joestateson at grandecom dot net
http://TipsForTheComputingImpaired.com
http://ResearchRiders.org Ask about my 99'R1100RT
=======================================================================

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Thanks Tim, AFAICT it is active because when it was attached
to the external firewire box, XP disk manager showed it as active
on "G:" just like it shows "C:" as active.

Maybe the Dell SP1a CD does not like the "thinkpad" or "ibm" in the bios. I
am going to try an OEM XP CD and use that to start an install of XP, then go
back to my Acronis true image and see the thinkpad can accept the already
activated image. I bought a couple of thinkpad "rebuilds" on ebay and am
replacing my old 800x600's non-speedsteps with relatively newer thinkpads
with speedstep cpus.

Question: the acronis image was of a fat32 6gb disk. The linux partition
on the "new" 6gb was linux. I wonder if the acronis true image install
could handle the change??? Doing an install of XP should remove all traces
of linux from the 6gb disk one would think.

Check it out with Disk Management to be sure. See if there is
only one partition. If there are more than one, is the one you
expect to control booting both a Primary partition and is it "active"?
For all you know, the OS might be in an Extended partition.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Beemer Biker]

Fixed (??): I gave up trying to install the XP SP2 image and went back to
the original XP Sp1 backup image from a year ago or so. That installed on
the drive and I then worked my way up to SP2 and the latest and greatest
from microsoft. I cannot account for why the XP SP2 image worked on one 6gb
drive (admittedly defective) but not on another.

Before I gave up, I installed Dell XP SP1A and at the prompt where it wanted
me to enter in the activation key, I rebooted with the acronis recovery and
attempted another Acronis install. It failed with the same "ntldr missing".