NTLDR is missing. Hard Drive Failure.

[Trobles86]

Hello,

Old Dell computer running Windows XP that was never backed up and I am trying to recover files and photos. I get NTLDR is missing when I boot. I've used Testdisk/Photorec to try to recover my data but when going through the recovered data it seems to be all system files that I know nothing about. I used Ubuntu on the Dell to run Testdisk. I also hooked up the hard disk to my laptop with a hard disk adapter and got the same results.I also ran a NTLDR boot disk but ended up with the same NTLDR is missing message. I dont have a XP recovery disk. Anybody that has had this issue please help!

 

[Frozwire]

I also hooked up the hard disk to my laptop with a hard disk adapter and got the same results.

If you have access to another PC or laptop then you can connect the hard drive in to that machine and get the files you wanted to recover from your hard drive in there.

 

[Trobles86]

If you have access to another PC or laptop then you can connect the hard drive in to that machine and get the files you wanted to recover from your hard drive in there.

I did connect the hard drive to another laptop and the files available were mainly system files that I am unfamiliar with. My assumptions are bad sectors on the hard drive. Does this mean my drive it totally toast!? I also found a XP recover cd to fix the NTLDR is missing error but once I rebooted I received a boot.ini error. I tried a few tricks with the recovery disk in repair mode but nothing worked. The message I get is
" WIndows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Pleas re-install a copy of the above file."

 

[Cobalt006]

Well you have two choices . You can go on the hard drive is bad theory. Or you can go with windows is bad. Myself from what you are getting. I would go with the hard drive.

 

[DelJo63]

<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.

the HAL.DLL should be in the \i386 dir as hal._ll

If you can find it, then the way to get it relocated properly is

EXPAND -R wherever_it_is \windows\system32