XP: NTLDR is Missing

[Twisted.Raven]

ok, before I get flamed I searched google and here on neowin, and none of the solutions fixed my problem. I have tried "fixing" the installation, I tried reformatting 3 diffrernt times, nothing worked.

ok, I just recently got a new hard drive, IDE. Now I have two other hard drives, both SATA, one is a 74GB for windows and the other is for storage. I was running out of room on the storage drive so thats why I got another. I installed the drive and everything went fine, it's been working great for over 2 months. Today I decided to format XP, I did and everything worked fine, windows started up fine and i started installing updates. I did notice that my new IDE drive swaped drive letters and is now C:\, which was my 74GB SATA drive, which I dont want. I took out the windows XP cd and restarted, and got the error..

"NTLRD is Missing

Press ALT+CTRL+DEL to Restart"

I put the XP cd back in and it started up fine, now I'm all kinds of confused. Do you think the new Hard drive is causing the problem, it being an IDE drive and the others an SATA? I checked my boot options and my system drive is still set to primary. Not sure where to go from here..

[WinFreak]

I had the same problem. After reading several things, nothing really worked for me. There is this link (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314057) however it didn't work for me. What I did was copied all of the files i needed onto a second hard-drive from a second windows partition, and just re-installed windows all together on the bad drive. From what I read, this problem occurs from some missing registry hives. Windows is supposed to create backups of these files, not sure the directory where. But what you would have to do, is copy the back-up registry hives and then paste them in the windows directory where the other registry hives are, I did that and it just was like a clean install of windows (not useful at all). Here is some other text from (http://forums.techguy.org/t335058&highlight=login+prompt.html)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. Ensure your BIOS is configured to reach your CD-ROM before it checks your hard drive. You can check your BIOS on startup by holding down the "Delete" key when prompted to. This works for most PC systems.

2. Restart with a bootable Windows XP CD-ROM.

3. Wait for the startup and automatic loading of the Windows minimal set to take place from the CD, following any additional instructions as your configuration may need.

4. When prompted, pres "R" for Repair to enter the Windows Recovery Console.

5. Select the Windows installation you wish to work on when the list is brought up. Usually this will be "[1] C:\WINDOWS" which can be accessed by entering the number 1.

6. You will need to login using your admin password. If you didn't create one at Windows installation you may try to simply hit enter, but I have not verified this as I have always created an admin password on every setup.

NOTE: The order of the following is signifigant, which is not made clear in other repair steps I have found posted on the web.

7. At the command prompt, type "bootcfg /rebuild" and proceed to do the rebuild. This rebuilds the boot.ini file.

8. After waiting patiently for the drive scan to complete, you will be prompted to enter some information. You will be shown a list of the current Windows installations again. Enter the letter "A" at this prompt. You only need to enter one other thing which will be requested at the very next prompt for info, and that is the name of the Windows installation to use. In this case, you could just enter "C:\WINDOWS" without the quotes. On Windows 2000 setups, this would probably be "C:\WINNT". Hit enter to move through the rest of the info requests without actually providing any further data.

9. Again at the command prompt, type the following in sequence, with "Z" being the drive letter where the Win XP bootable CD is located:

cd \

copy Z:\i386\NTLDR C:

copy Z:\i386\NTDETECT.com C:

fixboot

10. After all of this, type "exit" at the command prompt to restart. Eject your CD, enter the BIOS again and reset the load order of the drives so that the hard drive with your Windows installation comes first, save the changes and exit the BIOS. Your computer should start up normally. If you have more than one entry in boot.ini you will be asked to select which system to boot up with"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Good luck, and I hope this helps........................Tony

[CrisCr0ss]

For me the best thing to do with these issues is just backup and format, solving a missing ntldr is probably the most innoying and tiresome thing iv ever had to troubleshoot, especially since i didnt really know what i was doing, so i plug in an external hard drive used Hirens boot cd to copy important files to the external hard drive and formatted everythng worked great since.

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

this is caused by installing windows onto another drive, ie F, or E, or G, etc.. when your primary drive is C (or another letter)

you then, changed your slave drive, into a master drive, confusing your windows, and not allowing a boot.

if you do not want to lose your data on your windows you are trying to save, i suggest doing a "repair" on your windows.

if it is a clean install, i strongly recommend formatting, and re-installing

[ford_fpv]

Assuming Windows is on the primary bootable drive, all you need to do is copy the NTLDR file from your WinXP-CD\i386 to C:\

You can do it using the recovery console.

Go to the recovery console

Enter your admin password

You can only access you Windows system dir, your removable media and the root / location of your C: drive.

copy D:\i386 C:\

D: is your CD-ROM. That should work. You can also fix the problem using BartPE.

Hope that fixes the problem, if it doesn't, your IDE, master/slave connectivoty as other people pointed out might be messed up.

Edited November 7, 2005 by ford_fpv

[Chanser]

XP Setup repair install.

[JiveMasterT]

yeah that happens when your xp install decides to install on a drive other than C for whatever reason. here's what i would do... wipe the install and then install windows on the drive you want to install on with only that drive in the computer. that way there can be no confusion.

[Guest sendmarksmail]

When it says "missing NTLDR" it just means that when you added your new HD, it became first to boot instead of your Windows Drive. Go to Bios and make sure that your Windows HD is first to boot and reboot. Now you can boot into Windows. The reason this happens is because a new drive, is usually placed first at default, but all you need to do is change the order of boot. C drive first. Hope this helps because this stumped me before when I first built my PC.

[Twisted.Raven]

alright, thanks for everones input! I got it kind-of figured out, it boots up fine now. But my Drives are still messed up, my system drive isn't C drive, its D drive, C drive is my new backup drive (IDE). Isn't the default master slave for hard drives IDE before SATA? Is there anyway to get thoes two flopped around, or i'm i going to have to live with it?

[JiveMasterT]

alright, thanks for everones input! I got it kind-of figured out, it boots up fine now. But my Drives are still messed up, my system drive isn't C drive, its D drive, C drive is my new backup drive (IDE). Isn't the default master slave for hard drives IDE before SATA? Is there anyway to get thoes two flopped around, or i'm i going to have to live with it?

586780441[/snapback]

here's what id try. take the ide drive out of the picture... unplug it and leave it alone. take your SATA drive and boot from your xp cd into the recovery console and do a repair of the master boot sector and see if the machine boots. the problem though is that since you installed to the D drive there may be system links thats are pointing to the D drive. once again... if this is a fresh install, i highly reccomend that you take out the ide drive, format the sata drive, install windows on the sata drive, boot for the first time, then install the ide drive again. thats your best bet instead of mucking around with things.

[Twisted.Raven]

here's what id try.  take the ide drive out of the picture... unplug it and leave it alone.  take your SATA drive and boot from your xp cd into the recovery console and do a repair of the master boot sector and see if the machine boots.  the problem though is that since you installed to the D drive there may be system links thats are pointing to the D drive.  once again... if this is a fresh install, i highly reccomend that you take out the ide drive, format the sata drive, install windows on the sata drive, boot for the first time, then install the ide drive again.  thats your best bet instead of mucking around with things.

586780462[/snapback]

Just tried that, took out the IDE drive and got NTLRD is missing error again. :angry:

[k22]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;318728

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;320397

[Twisted.Raven]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;318728

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;320397

586781153[/snapback]

already tried these as I said in a post above.

[JiveMasterT]

already tried these as I said in a post above.

586781212[/snapback]

is there some big objection to formatting it and starting it over? if its as fresh as you say then there cant be that much you'd have to redo, and it would definately be worth it to save yourself the headache down the road.

[+BudMan MVC]

Isn't the default master slave for hard drives IDE before SATA? Is there anyway to get thoes two flopped around, or i'm i going to have to live with it?

586780441[/snapback]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...;307844&sd=tech

How to change drive letter assignments in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q51978/

Order in Which MS-DOS and Windows Assign Drive Letters

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/234048/EN-US/

How Windows 2000 Assigns, Reserves, and Stores Drive Letters

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314470/

Definition of System Partition and Boot Partition

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=223188

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows

etc.. etc.. etc..

[JiveMasterT]

actually, is there any reason why you cant boot off the SATA drive, right click on my computer on the desktop, go to manage, go to storage, disk manager, right click on the drive / partition, go to change drive letter and paths, then change from there?

[NeoTrunks]

actually, is there any reason why you cant boot off the SATA drive, right click on my computer on the desktop, go to manage, go to storage, disk manager, right click on the drive / partition, go to change drive letter and paths, then change from there?

586781500[/snapback]

It won't you change the drive letter of the drive that holds Windows.

[Twisted.Raven]

is there some big objection to formatting it and starting it over?  if its as fresh as you say then there cant be that much you'd have to redo, and it would definately be worth it to save yourself the headache down the road.

586781435[/snapback]

I have tried formating it again, 4 different times now.

[JiveMasterT]

I have tried formating it again, 4 different times now.

586782532[/snapback]

did you try it with the other ide drive unhooked from the machine? did you make sure in your bios that the SATA drive was the first drive to boot from?

[Twisted.Raven]

did you try it with the other ide drive unhooked from the machine?  did you make sure in your bios that the SATA drive was the first drive to boot from?

586782611[/snapback]

yes, yes. it gives me the "NTLDR is Missing" error again when I unhook the IDE drive.

[JiveMasterT]

yes, yes. it gives me the "NTLDR is Missing" error again when I unhook the IDE drive.

586783908[/snapback]

that makes no sense that when you format the sata drive and install windows on it with the ide drive unhooked that it would come up with that error since when you install windows on a single drive it defaults to C and the boot sector would be placed on that drive.

[+John Teacake MVC]

Floppy Disk In the Drive, You wouldnt beleive it but it happens quite often at work.

[Riz360]

I had this a while ago. NTLRD is the bootup screen file I think. I tried for a good week, even tried copying a friends NTLRD and putting it in to the folder. It did'nt work.

I had to reformat

[Arckon]

In my BIOS, there is something that lets me change the boot order like PATA and SATA. I know it sounds stupid, but if I want to boot into Win XP (SATA drive), I have to have it set for PATA. And if I want to boot into Linux (PATA drive), then I have to have it set for SATA. It's backwards from what it should sound like, but that's how it works for me.

I have an MSI Neo2-S w/ an Award BIOS.

[Mx]

Reason for this is, NTLDR is on your other HD. Fix, insert XP disc and do a recovery or manually copy over the files.

Insert the Windows XP bootable CD into the computer.

When prompted to press any key to boot from the CD, press any key.

Once in the Windows XP setup menu press the "R" key to repair Windows.

Log into your Windows installation by pressing the "1" key and pressing enter.

You will then be prompted for your administrator password, enter that password.

Copy the below two files to the root directory of the primary hard disk. In the below example we are copying these files from the CD-ROM drive letter "E". This letter may be different on your computer.

copy e:\i386\ntldr c:\

copy e:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\

:)