Hard drive q's

logistic

Im having trouble booting up xp home. Its missing ntldr. Ive tried to replace the correct files (ntldtr and ntdetect.com) but when i reboot it still says im missing the file.

The hard drive has xp home and is ntfs formated. Is it possible to set up the hard drive as a slave in another system and access my documents as i dont want to reinstall the os and loose all my files.

If so how do i go about doing it?
Thanks.

BoB_BoT

yeap setting it up on another pc as a slave shouldn't be a prob. if you need to get files off your comp before formatting give knoppix a try. it's a linux os. it boots from the cd, is free, easy to use, works with ntsf format drives, doesn't require you to format the drive, if you have a burner attached you can burn off your data then format. Can't help you with the problem though, don't use xp, tis the lose. Although i did have a similar problem with a 98 comp before, just formatted, was quicker.

Reguarding switching the drive to a slave disk, all you do is take out the drive from the comp, look at the back of the disk for a little metal jumper, and if you look at the top of the disk it will more than likely have the jumper settings. Just place the little metal jumper on the slave setting.

logistic

Thanks for the info leggo but would it be possible to use a different os to go through say xp as im not realy up to scrath with linux.

Thanks

Bacchus

I had that problem once too (missing ntldr) on boot up. Turned out I had a disk in my Floppy drive. It tried to boot from it but of course that wasn't possible.
Who knows, maybe it's as simple as something like that.

Leggo explained the slave hard drive bit fine so I wont bother repeating.

MrPinK

If you get some bootable partitioning tool such as partition magic you could do it without removing your hard disk. You'd just create a new partition, install XP on it and boot from the new installation. You'll be able to see everything on the old partition, so you can copy everything that you need across, delete the old partition and reallocate it's space to the new one.

captainpat

Have had a number of these for unknown reasons, but they could be fixed by checking BOOT.INI. The pasrtition number had got corrupted, and everything cleared up when the correction was made.

I have XP Pro in my PC, and the win.ini looks like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Previous Operating System on C:"

Assuming you only have one copy of XP, your second entry may be different or not there. The main thing is to ensure that the entry "default=" and the following "multi" entry have "partition(1)" in them, not (2) or anything else.

You will need to boot with a Win98 boot disl to DOS, A:\ and type:

edit win.ini

This will open the file and allow you to change it if necessary.

If you already have partition(1) in the entries, then this fix is not for you. Worth a look though.

logistic

Thanks for the help. Got it sorted in the end by creating a new partition even though it was probable to longest way around the situation.

Thanks