NTLDR is missing, drives are down

[mongrel79]

hi team - sorry for the classic first-time-post-pleading-for-help action, but i need some help!

after months of slowly increasing bloat and many BSOD crashes, i decided to re-install windows xp clean. So i formatted my second hd, inserted the windows dvd and opted for a clean install.

unfortunately after formatting 99% of my main hd, alas, my computer crashhes again and i'm back to my old friend the BSOD.

So I reboot.

Now all I get is an 'NTLDR is missing' error message. With the boot DVD in the drive.

I have fiddled with the BIOS and made sure that it's set to boot from the DVD drive. No joy.

The only progress i've made is to make a floppy boot disk, which it does detect, and gets me past the error. However once in i can't cd to any other drives than A: - which is weird, because when i start up primary and master slave drives all seem to be detected.

Anyway, some help would be massively appreciated. I'm afraid good karma'll be your only reward though!

 

[rf6647]

Welcome to TS. Perhaps you have already solved your problem.

DVD drive - not bootable. Check out the media in another computer. Failure during format may be a hardware failure of the DVD drive. A media bootable in one computer does not guarantee that a different drive can read all sectors of the media.

Given the history behind your decision, I tend to suspect the RAM; check RAM using memtest86+. Using this tool involves a bootable CD, which is another check of the DVD drive.

This link for memtest has been recently updated for the newest release.

"Guides & Solved Issues" have topics for reloading XP and for troubleshooting crashes & reboots.

If the boot FD is Win98se and the HDD is formatted ntfs, I suspect that the environment ignores the HDD.

 

[mongrel]

Thanks!
I actually did get this sorted - i was confused by the Bios referring to my DVD drive as 'CD-ROM'. When I set that as a boot option it started off and I now have XP running like a dream!
Thanks for getting back though....