"NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to Restart"

JediNight

I had previously been running Windows 2000 and 2003 on my desktop, and just installed XP for the first time.

Besides a bit of idiotic letter assigning liberty by XP (Assigned C: to my data drive, and to the system partition and won't let me change them now, despite the data drive being labeled on my old OS), the OS installed fine.

The problem is I cannot boot the OS without the XP CD in the drive. If I take it out of the drive it tells me NTLDR is missing. If I put the CD back in, then it will boot into XP just fine. XP is updated to SP2 and all security updates. All my hardware drivers are also installed, and it still says that.

Any ideas on how I can stop this from happening? I don't see how I did anything to instantly fry my NT loader immediately.

Here's a screenshot of my Disk management if that helps. I did change the letters of 2 of my data drives, but neither was the Boot or System partition, so I don't see how that would cause this.

http://shinon.dreamhosters.com/files/manage.JPG

zilo

Do you have one drive with two partitions or two drives? If the former, the easiest way to fix it would be to go in to Disk Management (right click My Computer, Manage) and see if you can swap the drive letters around. If the latter, either do a cable swap or fiddle around in the BIOS and see if there's a setting for "boot drive".

JediNight

You can't change the drive letters for the Boot and System partitions, that was what I was explaining before.

C is listed as System, D as Boot.

I did change the letters on my 2 other data partitions, but there's no reason that should mess with the NT loader.

blincoln

I can't even imagine how Windows could get so screwed up that it would behave that way. You are probably better off reinstalling it, because if it's got a problem that big who knows what else is wrong?

zilo

Wow, that is exceptionally weird. I didn't even know you could separate the boot and OS install partitions.

Um... good luck?

JediNight

blincoln wrote: »

I can't even imagine how Windows could get so screwed up that it would behave that way. You are probably better off reinstalling it, because if it's got a problem that big who knows what else is wrong?

I didn't DO anything....

I booted off the CD, formatted my old C: partition, installed XP onto it. Installed SP2 from a network install. Rebooted. NTldr missing....

It's like it is searching for a Master Boot Record on C: and not finding it and just giving up. But for some reason having a bootable CD in the drive lets it boot off just fine then.

yurnamehere

Have you tried copying the NTLDR file off the CD onto the boot partition?

Creepy

Tried booting off a diskette and doing an fdisk c: /mbr ?

I don't want to make you think I'm picking on you here, but did you make sure there's not a floppy in your A: drive?

I had a guy bring back a "broken" PC one time. Carried it all the way back to our building from wherever it was. Had the NTLDR message on bootup. I ejected the diskette from A and sent him right back.

If neither one of those things was it I'd just start over.

PirateJon

You're all close. Dude, look at the boot.ini file on the C: once you get booted up. What does it say?

deke55555

Also you could try fixboot while in the recovery console:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixboot.mspx?mfr=true

enderwiggin13

I think Pirate Jon is on the right track. Somehow your boot.ini is still looking for your NTLDR on C even though it's on D now. When you have the disc in the drive, it appears to be finding it there and loading Windows with no problem.

You'll likely have a line in it that says something like

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP" /fastdetect

I want to say that you should change partition(1) to partition(2), but I'd have a backup boot disc and backup the ini file...basically google for help on doing this before making any changes.

EleazarDMM

I've had this and similar problems when running more than one HD. If you don't have anything much installed on the OS drive other than the OS, the way I fixed it was to reinstall Windows with only the OS drive plugged into the mobo. I then plugged the data drive in after the fact and deleted the subsequently inert OS data from it.

As to whether there's a less involved software-only method of fixing the problem, I do not know.

nexuscrawler

I had this problem when I reinstalled 2000 once. It was looking on the wrong partition for the Os files. Editing the boot.ini file fixed it.

PirateJon

This is trickier than i thought. The boot sequence is:

BIOS >> HDD Boot sector / MBR >> NTLDR >> Boot.ini.

so if the error is "can't find NTLDR", the problem isn't with the boot.ini.

PirateJon

more here; but I don't have time to dig into it myself.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457123.aspx

JediNight

I'm realizing that XP made my single PATA133 drive as the System partition, and the Boot partition is on one of my 2 SATA HDDs. I'm not really sure how the boot.ini should be altered when using the SATA connections rather than IDE, I'll have to look it up if it turns out I do need to change that.

This is what the boot.ini looks like on C:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

PS: In case you didn't look at the screenshot, I don't own a floppy drive. Not that I couldn't borrow one from my friend's computer in a pinch, but I haven't needed one since getting my first USB key years ago...

PirateJon

So from the pic you posted, the boot.ini looks right. Disk 2 (rdisk 1) and partition 1.

ATA and SATA are the same in boot.ini AFAIK.


From that link I posted.

The MBR is the first sector of data on the startup hard disk and contains instructions (called boot code) and a table (called a partition table) that identify primary and extended partitions. The BIOS reads the MBR into memory and transfers control to the code in the MBR.

The computer then searches the partition table for the active partition. The first sector of the active partition contains boot code that enables the computer to do the following:

* Determine the file system used.
* Locate and start the operating system loader file, Ntldr.

This is what's failing. I think creepy nailed it - fdisk/ mbr or the recovery console that does the same thing.

JediNight

I wish Windows wasn't so retarded. I would just unplug that PATA drive to put a new MBR/whatever on the SATA that has Windows. But I know it would 95% chance gag at that and force a reinstall.

PirateJon

If you do that, then after you fix the MBR you'd need to change the boot.ini to rdisk 0.

JediNight

Okay, so if I unplugged the PATA drive and ran fixmbr on the current Boot partition, I could just change the Boot.ini and it should work then?