NTLDR

[GTS]

Apologies if this has been asked before.
Installing XP Pro on a brand new IDE Hard drive - did not want to clone the
old drive as some files corrupted.
Change the boot sequence to boot from CD first in Megatrend BIOS, XP Pro CD
in drive.
As soon as BIOS finishes, message comes up saying "Cannot find NTLDR, press
any key to try again" - and ofcourse pressing a key makes no difference.
So I am stuck! Searching the MS KB gives many entries for NTLDR, but the
common theme seems to be problems installing XP over earlier windows
versions, or corrupted MBR's, but none of them apply here as it is a new
drive just out of the wrapper.
Any ideas please?

 

[Eric Gisin]

You formatted the new drive ahead of time, right (no need, setup can do). The
boot sector tries to load ntldr, which is not there.

The CD is not booting. Is it on a chipset IDE channel? Did you burn the CD
yourself? If so, you screwed up the boot parameters.

 

[dg]

Sometimes when I have problems with boot order I disable ALL other boot
devices. i.e. set first boot device as CD-ROM, then for 2nd 3rd and 4th
boot device I choose "disabled". This way the MB should ONLY look at the CD
drive and never even attempt anything else. Hope it helps, it has surely
helped me from time to time.

--Dan