NTLDR Missing in XP PRO setup on newly built computer

[Dan]

I am building a new computer. It is a P4 2.4Ghz 800Mhz
frontside bus on an ECS motherboard. I have formatted my
Maxtor 120 Gig harddrive and partitioned it to 3 40 Gig
drives, all in NTFS format as recommended for use with XP
PRO. Bios is set to read CD, Floppy, and HDD-0 as bootable
drives and in this order.

Upon startup and after initialization of IDE drive and PCI
Device recognition, the system goes through and
says: "boot CD". After doing this it says: NTLDR Missing -
press CTRL ALT DELETE and restart. I do it and this
cycle just keeps happening over and over.

I tried to force windows setup by hitting "C" upon
startup. When Windows goes through it's startup ( XP PRO-
UPGRADE CD is in drive), the system crashes and restarts
the startup propcess all over again. This action will
loop infinitely if I let it.

I went to the store and bought the WINDOWS XP PRO SP1
Complete Disk and put into the drive to see if it would
copy the boot files to the hard drive. THis disk
immediately went through the Windows setup utility and
downloaded a bunch of system files, but when it started
downloading the device files, midway through the process,
the system would crash and reboot/restart. This too would
loop indefinitely if I let it.

I tried to COPY the NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM files from the
XP PRO CD, onto the C drive, manually, but was given an
error by the computer stating it could not read the D, E,
F, G, or H drives.


These boot files are missing from my DOS program on C
drive and I am at a loss on how to get them there so my
computer will boot properly and so I can install windows
properly. Any assitance would be appreciated.

 

[Stuart]

Boot from the CD and enter the recovery console and type 'bootcfg'

This usually works

 

[Malke]

Boot from the CD and enter the recovery console and type 'bootcfg'

This usually works

Do a RAM test (www.memtest86.com) and let it run overnight, if you don't
get errors immediately. If the RAM is good, then use Maxtor's disk
diagnosis utility to check the drive. I know your hardware is new, but
even new hardware can be bad. Generally, if hardware is going to fail,
it does so right away and then chugs along for years. Installation
failures of MS operating systems are most often traced to bad RAM
and/or bad hard drive.

Malke

 

[Alex Nichol]

Boot from the CD and enter the recovery console and type 'bootcfg'

Should be
BootCfg /Rebuild

 

[jdk]

I am building a new computer. It is a P4 2.4Ghz 800Mhz
frontside bus on an ECS motherboard.

I have formatted my

Maxtor 120 Gig harddrive and partitioned it to 3 40 Gig
drives, all in NTFS format

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ see below ...

as recommended for use with XP

PRO. Bios is set to read CD, Floppy, and HDD-0 as bootable
drives and in this order.

Upon startup and after initialization of IDE drive and PCI
Device recognition, the system goes through and
says: "boot CD". After doing this it says: NTLDR Missing -
press CTRL ALT DELETE and restart. I do it and this
cycle just keeps happening over and over.

I tried to force windows setup by hitting "C" upon
startup. When Windows goes through it's startup ( XP PRO-
UPGRADE CD is in drive), the system crashes and restarts
the startup propcess all over again. This action will
loop infinitely if I let it.

I went to the store and bought the WINDOWS XP PRO SP1
Complete Disk and put into the drive to see if it would
copy the boot files to the hard drive. THis disk
immediately went through the Windows setup utility and
downloaded a bunch of system files, but when it started
downloading the device files, midway through the process,
the system would crash and reboot/restart. This too would
loop indefinitely if I let it.

I tried to COPY the NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM files from the
XP PRO CD, onto the C drive, manually, but was given an
error by the computer stating it could not read the D, E,
F, G, or H drives.


These boot files are missing from my DOS program on C

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I have no idea what you are trying to say here? DOS can't read or write
to NTFS let alone run on it.

drive and I am at a loss on how to get them there so my
computer will boot properly and so I can install windows
properly. Any assitance would be appreciated.

Did you need to specify a driver via F6 to access the hardrive when you
originally installed XP, if indeed you have installed XP, I'm not
entirely sure from your post? From your description and for whatever
reason it sounds like XP can no longer find the system partition to
finish booting. If so you will need to use F6 and supply the driver via
floppy to do a repair (or install) with the XP CD.

John