ntldr is missing

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

I tried looking it up on the web but it helped none. It all started about a month ago when I tried install a second HD as I wanted more space. It was a 30 gig HD (Maxtor) Now my mate installed it, but I think he completely messed things up. The primary HD, 180 gig, got very very slow, to the point that I formatted it and reinstalled the OS on the 30 gig and had the 180 gig as my backup. That worked brilliantly.

Lately a big blue screen would come up about physical memory dump begining, or something. I just restart the computer, now lastnight I got some serious critical errors so I turned off the computer, I may have downloaded a virus. Anyway I turned my comp off and on again some time later, it got stuck on the second screen, the one after the comp checks for IDE connections. you sometimes only see it for a second, anyway it froze on that screen... for ages, I restarted about 5 or 6 times. Still nothing. so I took out the hard drive, I disposed of it today and bought a bran new 250 gig maxtor HD.

Now I tried reinstalling windows XP from CD rom but it says that I am missing the NTLDR file (New Technology Loader file or something?). How do I get this sorted? I have spent 400 euro's in the last month on upgrades and I am seriously pissed off with it. Can we work with just the 250 gig HD, pretend that there is no other HD's to work with...

Oh I did something in the bios, reset back to default settings and then to optimised settings. Any idea's on what to do? Your help is much appreciated... thanks.

MunsterCycling

FDISK the new drive so the partitions are removed then partition it again, make the system partition about 15 - 20 GBs. Boot from the CD again and try to install, if you get the same result then get yourself a new cd as the one you have is more than likely faulty.

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

DAmn, when it asked me to partition, I didn't. I didn't think you had to do that. SO I just went ahead with the installation... Is this repairable?

aFlabbyPanda

no need to fdisk or create multiple partitions (just slows performance). Work with just the 250GB connected. Boot from the XP cd, remove all current partitions first, and then reinstall on one single partition (you can quick format ntfs).

and as above if you still get errors after that check your cd drive and installation media.

MunsterCycling

But if your installetion should go bye bye sometime in the future you'll be glad you created seperate system and data partitions and No it won't slow down performance but will let you get more from the same size disk as you can use smaller cluster sizes.

Gadgetman496

Follow this link & read through it.
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm