Windows ME.....NTDLR missing

[Hodsocks]

I am a little confused and hope you guys (or gals of course) can put me straight.

I always thought NTDLR was a problem mainly with windows XP, 2000 etc but I have a guy here who is getting the error message with Windows ME.

I reloaded his software a few days ago and it ran OK for a couple of days then the "NTDLR is missing" message came up.

I have done some searches on the web, including microsoft and they all mention it with relation to XP, no mention of ME.

I don't really want to reload his software again, I will check out all his cable connections later today but don't hold out much hope.

 

[Hodsocks]

That should probably be NTLDR.........................

 

[Hodsocks]

Ok, I have it sorted now I have been to look at the problem. It was nothing more than a floppy still in the drive

Its not the normal message I expect from a floppy in the drive.......but you learn something new every day.

 

[alphnumeric]

It happens if the floppy was formated with an NT OS. The format process on an NT machine puts a different bootstrap on the floppy. I was scratching my head the first time I saw that too.

 

[Blaze23]

On the XP and 2000 mac hines if I remeber correctly if you leave the disk in teh drive when booting up you get the NTLDR error, in windows 98 you will get a non system disk error.

 

[alphnumeric]

I think if it's a blank dos formated floppy you will get a non system disk error regardless of the OS. It's a message displayed by the BIOS when it can't find a disk with system files on it. A floppy formated on a 9X os is a dos floppy. If the floppy is formated on an NT os it will display the missing NTLDR message when you try to boot from it. NT doesn't put bootable system files on it but it does put a bootstrap, not sure if that is what you call it. If you format a floppy in 2k or XP and put these files on it:
NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI. You can boot from it. It's not a real NT boot-floppy but it will work if your machine isn't hosed to bad. It's just enough to get to the NT Kernel and start it.