Ntldr not found

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bmyzer101

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My wifes hard drive crashed so I got her a new one. I did a fresh install of windows XP Professional. Everything went great. Got all the drivers downloaded and installed. The system was working great. She shut it down for the night and when she started it up the message ntldr not found. hit ctrl+alt+delete to restart. I tried formatting the drive and reinstalling but the same thing happened on reboot. How does this happen and how do I fix this issue?
 
this happens when windows cannot find that file (i know, i know, duh...). this usually happens when the file is on a bad or inacessible portion orof the drive and cannot be found and used. it can also happen if the file has been removed or deleted. Was the hard drive new? if so you may be looking at some other issues. Because it keeps happening (assuming you have a good hdd) i'd say its a possible a bad ide/sata cable (good news) or hard drive controller (very bad news).
 
Can be a hardware failure, install error, driver failure or missing, or suspicion of illegal Windows.
Reboot, remove partition, reboot, reinstall, then let windows disk install normally... Watch closely for warning of illegal software and call Microsoft on the number given to get the approval you will need.
 
Can be a hardware failure, install error, driver failure or missing, or suspicion of illegal Windows.
Reboot, remove partition, reboot, reinstall, then let windows disk install normally... Watch closely for warning of illegal software and call Microsoft on the number given to get the approval you will need.
@raybay
Huh???! ntldr missing has absolutely nothing! to do with illegal Windows.

gee, raybay, i should put a hot key on my keyboard for you as i have to ask you "Huh?" soooo many times :haha:
And you say you actually run a computer repair shop for 30 years???

Moving on....
As brucethetech already mentioned, "ntldr missing" can have everything to do with faulty hard drive or boot file corruption.

@bmyzer101
Take a look at this link
 
Actually windows disk had a huge scratch on it. Copied image to another harddrive, burned the image to a new disk and presto loaded and is running perfect. Funny how that was the only two files that seemed to have a problem being copied to the new harddrive, but to any end, that was the problem. Thank you all for your help and imput.
 
good job!

Many times, using CHKDSK /F will correct errors and create exactly this condition;
mapping out a set of bad sectors WILL corrupt one or more files
(unless obviously totally contained within the free space).

Finding the files affected by this is difficult and sometimes it's a system file as in your case.

Persistence pays off when there's lots of things you would greatly like to preserve.

again - - well done and cudos to you :wave:
 
Thanks to you for the update...

Sometimes you can buff out a scratch... when you no longer need to do so...
 
Yeah been a DJ for many years. Learned to buff a scratch and all the tricks associated with it. Dont tthink I didn 't try but when it came down to it I had to reburn the image. Thanks for all the help but I do have one question....What the hell is the whole hate thing oing on???? Sound like me and the wife....wtf. Thought this was suppose to be a forum to discuss and solve issues not send hate junk mail. If it doesn't help solve the issue dont respond.....OMG. Love the help, could do without the drama, good lord do you, (and you know who you are) really need the drama in your life???????
 
...but I do have one question....What the hell is the whole hate thing oing on????
hmm; don't see how 'hate' came into the discussion.
The OMG is a statement of shock and dismay.
The :eek: comes from the extremely low probability of polishing the surface doing anything restorative and highly likely to induce a total media failure. The data is gone in the first place, so polishing will not magically recover the data. Instead, with the r/w head flying less than 0.001 above the surface, polishing is likely to cause a head crash and thus do more damage than good. Today with single platters and only one r/w head one might get away with this and not induce the crash - - As I would never do this with my equipment, I would never suggest it to anyone else. Depending upon when someone started with computers (Mainframes, servers, pcs, macs, or Unix), HDs use to be stacked with multiple platters and r/w heads on both sides of each. No way in holy heck could you find the scratch let alone access it.

We aim to be analytical and to criticize ideas, not people. Sorry if the comment was read as being anything less.
 
@bmyzer101
First, and foremost, I’m glad to hear your problem was solved

Speaking only for myself, I’d like to respond to your comments. So, I feel compelled to first note there’s a much longer history and much larger context then this single thread

I’ve been a member of the TS community for the last 3 years and can honestly say
  • I enjoy the varied cast of characters and personalities on these boards
  • I’ve also grown to take a strong sense of pride in the site for the help it can provide to others as well as an open forum for idle chit-chat for anything from cars to favorite movies, etc.
As I don’t want to dredge up and go into long rants about the past, i'll stick to two examples (out of many, many posts over the years) for perspective
  1. I'll admit I’m offended by someone who feels it's OK for them to post whatever inappropriate topic they want while bashing others for posting things that make sense. Such as a post that humorously! asks if he should tell his wife about his own adultery!? Does the humor and tenor of that post sound like a mea culpa or bragging rights? Then proceed to bash someone who posts in the very same forum asking for help with a job description
  2. But the defining moment that took it over the top: A soldier who’s risking his life for us in Iraq posted because his system was crashing with STOP: 0x00000024 and he needed help. You’d think someone who likes to pontificate and make-up and pull "convenient and self-serving" technical facts out of the air to help anoint himself the all knowing expert, might stay quiet this time to let someone else actually help someone in return for fighting a war for us. Facts were simple
    • They were getting STOP 0x00000024 which (by definition) is an NTFS error
    • So when i stated as much I was countered with nonsense and gibberish (I encourage you to read the thread for yourself)
      Those problems Looking Around describes are usually with Windows Server editions and with X64 machines. It can be hard drive NTFS issues but not commonly so.
      We still need your computer and hardware configuration to helpfully adivise you
    • I'll end my reply happy to report I eventually just had the soldier download and run Windows Recovery Console and then run chkdsk to repair the disk filesystem. He was then able to recover his data instead of being lead down wild goose chases for solutions while in the middle of a war
      alright lookinaround,

      Got the computer up and running did a bunch of test. found nothing else wrong.
      did the backup through knoppix and everything is all good.

      I greatly appreciate your help.

      Thanks again
Anyway, i've stated my case. I hope to see you back among the forums. There's a good bunch of varied people here :)
 
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