Can't Get Into Windows XP, NTDLR MISSING ERROR

I recently ran Norton Utilities on a friends pc and it did exactly that...wiped out the boot partition, I'm thinkin', had to reformat the drive and reinstall 98...she was none too happy, so I gave her my old video card, a coke, and a smile....

Hopefully it's a cable problem....

Try to boot from the XP cd and do a "repair install", if it detects the existing XP installation... you may be out of luck, however.

I don't have a WIN XP Install disc because you see I did have a HP computer and I had it upgraded, only keeping the CD-Writer and HDD from the HP machine. HP don't give you an actual WinXP Cd only a stupid recovery cd which won't work anymore because I have new parts and it is now a non-HP PC now. I hope that made sense anyway I have checked all cables and I found none to be loose. However I have searched net a bit and found out the NTDLR is an actual file used to boot up Windows and then I thought if I create a boot disc with the NTDLR.dll on it from another PC then maybe I would be able to get into windows and copy the file to my C:\ thus solving the problem. Here's the site where I got that idea from: http://www.servenet.com/ipiboard/archive010601/3937.html

Go to Microsoft's web site and search their knowledge base on this subject. I found an article there "How to troubleshoot "NTLDR is missing". The first one I found was 318728 in the knowledge base. It is for windows 2000 but should work for XP too. You could probably find it for XP too but I didn't take the time.

NTDLR missing - Repair

Start the PC using the Windows XP cd. Go into recovery console.
use the BOOTCFG /repair command to rebuild the boot.ini.
Go to the i386 subdirectory on the XP cd and copy NTLDR and ntdetect.com to the root of c:
Exit and reboot.

-Eric Hayes
Senior PC Tech
Microspecialists 2000 L.L.C.
210-340-2213

I wonder how many more clowns will tell you to put in your XP CD?

Anyway, did you fix the problem with another copy of netldr? If not i can email you one off my CD.

I have had this problem before when installing XP on an old Athlon pc. XP appeared to have problems with the HD (10Gb) and would not boot.

A friend suggested XP was not partial to old hardware. I installed W2K instead and it went in first go, no probs.

The reason i tell you this is because in this case, even copying a new Netldr did not solve the problem.

Do you have (or are you considering buying) another HD. After all i'm sure 20G is not enough. If so, try installing XP onto the other drive. If it is just your data your worried about, maybe the easiest is to remove the drive and stick it into someone elses pc, backup the data, then format the sucker. (Note that any amount of formating did not solve my problem as formating dose not fix the boot sector. The recovery console - fixmbr also did not mix my mbr)

Originally posted by edwards1
I wonder how many more clowns will tell you to put in your XP CD?

Click to expand...

Just copying over the ntldr file will most likely not solve his problem.

There is a reason ntldr is missing, and it probably has something to do with a corrupted volume or boot settings, which just copying a file is not going to fix.

I can honestly say I've never seen "just a" corrupted or missing ntldr. It is also very likely that other files are corrupted to, which is a prelude to a larger problem. Furthermore, you can get this message if you are missing other files too. Just because it says it is missing ntldr, doesn't mean it is really missing.

If you are against using the XP system repair for some silly reason (highly recommended), you may be able to repair a damage boot sector by loading the XP CD to access the recovery console. First, you might want to verify your disk is in good health by running chkdsk. Type in fixmbr and hope for the best. You may also try bootcfg /rebuild.

If these things don't work, then you have a larger problem that the XP repair will possible fix. If the XP repair doesn't fix it, then you probably have a disk or memory problem.

I've moved a drive with an OK installation of XP Home to another machine. When I try to boot I get the NTLDR missing message.

As recommended in previous posts I've run the BOOTCFG /rebuild and copied NTLDR and NTDETECT files but this hasn't worked.

I don't want to lose the data on this drive.

Can anyone suggest a further course of action?

Thanks

CZB

Originally posted by edwards1
I wonder how many more clowns will tell you to put in your XP cd
... ....
The reason i tell you this is because in this case, even copying a new Netldr did not solve the problem.

Do you have (or are you considering buying) another HD. After all i'm sure 20G is not enough. If so, try installing XP onto the other drive. If it is just your data your worried about, maybe the easiest is to remove the drive and stick it into someone elses pc, backup the data, then format the sucker. (Note that any amount of formating did not solve my problem as formating dose not fix the boot sector. The recovery console - fixmbr also did not mix my mbr)

Click to expand...

Edward is probably got you started on the best course.
These companies( HP Dell) use proprietary cd's to force people to use them for upgrades and fixes obviously for $
If you are going to doityourself get your own microsoft copy of Windows if your budjet can .Also a new Hdd ,install as master and the existing HDD as slave.Once you have loaded your win on the master you should be able to get all your files.

BTW I really think there is a hardware error as your original problem either connective or compatibility
Good luck

Bios Firmware Upgrade

NTDLR is MISSING
press Control Alt Delete

Click to expand...

compaq presario 700
had that problem after installing a replacement 40gig harddrive

because laptop runing xp eventually died -
would not come on :dead:


solved it with firmware bios upgrade :grinthumb

Download xxcopy16 to a working Windows 2000 or XP install, take a floppy

Press start run and type cmd.exe press enter

go to the path where you saved the file, i.e. cd \xxcopy

type:

XXCOPY16 C:\NTLDR A:\ /H
XXCOPY16 C:\NTDETECT.COM A:\ /H
XXCOPY16 C:\BOOT.INI A:\

Now try to boot with this floppy on your computer, if you are unable to build this floppy I can send you an image of it.

Hope you can get your data back...

If this procedure does not work I would create a Bootable Windows PE CD, this will require you to have a Windows XP or 2003 CD and also a Windows 2000, XP or 2003 system with a CD burner to create it from. http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

On that CD also include the demo version of R-Studio http://www.r-studio.com/

It will scan your computer for all files even though there is no proper partition table and will enable you to recover data (the demo version is limited to files of size less than 64k bit it will give you an idea of how much data you can recover so you know if you should buy it or not...)

A similar thing has happened to me but I'm on a RAID-0 setup, not to get your hope down but I've been trying for 3 days now without much look (all my data is scrambeled due to the RAID-0)

EDIT: sorry, I did not see the date of this thread