NTLDR is Missing

[btcomm]

When I try to boot from this hard drive it gives me the error NTLDR is Missing.

I have looked at what is on the drive, sure enough ntldr is there, so why does it keep giving me this error message?

The bios recognizes the drive as master, I've even tried installing windows in a new directory and it still gives me this error.


Another hd that I had formatted was able to install windows in this same computer, I tried fixboot and fixmbr and still won't boot.

[SpywareDr]

Windows may not start and you may receive an "NTLDR is missing" error message if Windows is not up-to-date and there are too many files in the root folder
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320397

[ttodd]

I have the same occassional Problem as well;
Been having a couple of episodes in the past month in which my Hardrives switch letters And therefore my PC Boots up with NTLDR is missing. The first episode took me maybe two hours to figure out and fix, this past morning, same problem , I was able to fix in under 15 minutes. So now I would like to be Able to permanently fix so it won’t happen again.
Scenario: PC in the A.M. won’t shut down or reboot even if I use alt/con/del .
So I manually shut down power button only to discover the dreaded ‘ntldr is missing’ upon restart in the initial bios screen mode of my Windows XP ( details in my signature).
So out comes the XP disc and I see after using the R repair function, that my HD lettering has been moved around.
My C: drive Main (with O/S and is partitioned with D Drive as well)- (160GB) is on a SATA IDE cable (red), and my other two Hard Drives are then (after the CDROM drives (E:/F: drives ), numbered G: (80 GB- Picture and video folder) and H:drive 80 GB MP3’s .., (actually the H drive –I have lettered M drive for Music… ) .
So after my PC reports NTLDR is missing, I find that my C: drive is now E: and the rest of the drives are all out of order as well. BUT the important C drive of course probably can’t be found because it is now not the Normal C drive.., that the bios is looking for .

In order to fix all of this I pull the power cord and outside panel and unplug the one IDE cable which is loading both 80 MB HD’s to Motherboard and restart PC.
It now finds C drive with NTLDR missing of which I now use the famous fix of –
Copy E:\i386\ntlder C:\ ‘enter
Copy E:\i386\ntdetect.com C:\ ‘enter


So … All is well again.. The Hard drives do not have a problem with scan disk, and chkdsk ( file repair,) as well I do regular maintenance on these drives every month or less.,, The problem seems to lie in the waking up of the PC in morning, and this jarring effect of manually turning off the power button to get it to wake up seems to be the problem. I usually leave the PC on 24 hours a day and the power saving techniques I use are having the monitor shut off after 10 minutes. and the Hard drives never shut off.. During the daytime hours of 7am to 12 midnight this enables the PC to come to life rather quickly with a touch of the keyboard or move the mouse to wake. ( I also rfeboot the PC a few times during the course of the day to refresh as well).
My Virus program (F-SECURE) comes into play for updates and scanning around 5 am. We usually turn off the monitor manually after midnight instead of leaving the glowing screen on and waiting 10 minutes to auto shut off.

SO What should I be looking for in accordance to Computer maintenance beyond my own approach????? Sorry if I hijacked this thread--
Thanks for the read

[SuperSparks]

That message can sometimes be as a result of a corrupt Boot.ini. Boot up with the WinXP CD in the drive, and go to the Recovery Console. At the command prompt, type "Fixboot", then type "Fixmbr", then "chkdsk /r" all without the quotes.

[ua549]

I keep an emergency boot disk containing boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com. The boot.ini file is identical to the one on the system. The emergency boot disk can be any device that is bootable - CD, DVD, memory stick, floppy, etc.

[ttodd]

I keep an emergency boot disk containing boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com. The boot.ini file is identical to the one on the system. The emergency boot disk can be any device that is bootable - CD, DVD, memory stick, floppy, etc.

That sounds like a great idea.., where could I acquire the same, and how exactly would you get the information to work??
Is there a site that I could read up on this??

[ua549]

If you have a floppy drive copy the files from your C: drive to a bootable floppy.
Making a bootable CD is different depending on the software you are using.
Copy the same 3 files to the CD and make sure that when you burn it as a bootable CD.

Link

[SuperSparks]

Hre's a KB article, it's just as valid with WinXP:

Start Windows 2000 from floppy