New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

missing ntldr file

post #1 of 8
8/19/08 at 6:37am
Thread Starter 
my desktop recently had the issue of saying ntldr is missing during the boot process. i use win xp pro with sp3. will fixmbr work to fix this problem? what other options are there? thanks for any help.
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 8
11/29/08 at 6:14pm
I am having a similar issue... I ran a wipe drive on my system, and now I am trying to reinstall Windows XP and I get the error NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart... UGH!! Please help us.
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 8
11/29/08 at 7:18pm
short answer: make sure you don't have a cd in the drive the pc might be trying to boot from and if that doesn't fix it, do a repair of the Master Boot Record with fixmbr.

If that fails you can do a repair install of windows, but hopefully the fixmbr will do the trick
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 8
11/29/08 at 7:29pm
I will try that if I can get to DOS Thanks for the help, I will let you guys know how it turns out.

It appears that I can't even get to dos, so I loaded up via a MS DOS floppy and I can't do anything from there... fixmbr chk dsk nothing fdisk nothing works...
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 8
11/30/08 at 12:21am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Summoner View Post
I will try that if I can get to DOS Thanks for the help, I will let you guys know how it turns out.

It appears that I can't even get to dos, so I loaded up via a MS DOS floppy and I can't do anything from there... fixmbr chk dsk nothing fdisk nothing works...
ooops. sorry, I wasn't very clear. you don't do this from a command prompt you do it from a recovery console. boot from the Windows CD and let it go until you get to the point where it says to press "R" to repair a windows installation using recovery console (or something very similar to that - I forget the exact wording). that will put you in the recovery console, and from there you type "fixmbr".
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 8
11/30/08 at 3:59am
Gotcha. Well I would try that, but It gives me the error before it even load the windows CD. Sometimes if I slide the CD in just before the 2nd Alienware flash screen it will say "Press any key to boot to CD..." but the one time it allowed me to press F6 it did not see the floppy drive attached so I was unable to load the RAID drivers. Then later it saw the drive but it never let me get back to the ability to pres F6. So I took the drives out, I plugged them into my desktop ran windows XP install on one and ran a normal format on the other plugged them back into the laptop hoping that it would at least load better so that I could run another install over the top, but when I press the power button now, it sits silently for a min with a few humm and haaa's then it sounds like it's starting up like normal but nothing shows up on the screen... I tried to start it up with the windows CD still nothing... I am tired I will try more tomorrow I guess :-(

Thanks for the help and any other suggestions you may have driouis!!
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 8
11/30/08 at 2:09pm
Thread Starter 
update
i fixed the problem. turns out my bios switched boot order of my hard drives. my next question is why would that happen? could it be the cmos battery is bad?
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 8
11/30/08 at 4:38pm
glad you got it fixed subnetmask! Honestly, I'm not sure why it might have changed.

Summoner: sounds like you need to change the boot order in your bios. To access the bios most times you press either <delete> <F2> or <F11> as your machine powers on. yours might be different, so if none of those work try all the "F" keys and possibly <esc>. Once you're in the bios setup, you want to look for the option to change the order of devices your machine tries to boot from. Make your CD ROM #1 and then make sure the XP CD is in the drive, save changes and reboot.
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home