ntldr is missing problem

[John Beaulieu]

hi

every time i reboot my pc i get an 'ntloader is missing' and told to press ctrl-alt-del to reset, where it happens again and again and again

now i have made an xp boot disk on my other pc and used this to get into the recovery console, then copied ntldr and ntdetect.com onto floppy then copied onto c:\ of my 'fooked' pc (along with making boot.ini) which reboots my pc correctly when i exit - but as soon as i turn off or restart my pc it ****s up once again

now is this a virus or is something wrong with my hdd?

cheers in advance

camps

[Shimmyhill]

Do you have SP1 installed ??

There was a HDD Cache error that was patched that would either give unmountable boot volume or the error you have.

Also have you ran chdsk /r from the recovery console ??

[Inertia_]

Best cure for this problem is to boot your original Windows XP installation CD by setting CDROM as the primary boot location in your bios.

Go through the usual installation dialogs until it tells you it's located an existing installation of windows, and asks you if you'd like to 'repair the existing installation'. Select that option and it'll take about 20 minutes, replacing any core files as necessary. You'll have a working comp with all your original files/configs intact.

[John Beaulieu]

it wouldnt read from cdrom when the error occured - i had to make floppy boot disks via my other pc then run it all via floppy

when it finally loaded it all in i pressed R to get the recovery console up then went on from there

so should i instead press f1 (i think) to install windows again?

camps

[Inertia_]

it wouldnt read from cdrom when the error occured - i had to make floppy boot disks via my other pc then run it all via floppy

when it finally loaded it all in i pressed R to get the recovery console up then went on from there

so should i instead press f1 (i think) to install windows again?

camps

Yeah. Don't use the recovery console - act as if you're performing a fresh install. Then it'll ask you if you wish to repair the existing installation.

[MartyG]

This is normally a problem when the active boot partition is not the standard c: drive. I had this with a Windows 2000 server install.

All you need to do to fix it is copy the ntldr and ntdetect.com files (which are on the Win install disc) to the root of your boot partition. No amount of "Windows repair" stuff will cure it.

Regards
Marty