NTLDR Missing WTF

Malmedicine

Hey brought my computer into college today (it was working yesterday and last night grand) and got this message up saying NTLDR missing press cntrl alt del to restart . I restart same crap. Any thing i can do with it. What are the chances its faulty cable/harddrive as opposed to missing software. These things easy to fix or am I up **** creek.

Tom Dunne

Moved from laptops.

It sounds like you may need to do a repair installation of Windows, not a big deal really.

peepsbates

check the cables first anyway, it happens to mine the odd time

thefinalstage

I would type it up myself but why bother?

Linky

8T8

You don't have a USB drive plugged in by any chance if so unplug it and try booting again.

kleefarr

Has it got a floppy drive? If so, make sure there's no floppy in it.

Malmedicine

Nah no usb or floppy disk. Ran diagnostic , hard drive found so guess its not missing cable or hard drive destruction! So at the moment trying to do a windows repair

stanley1

is your hard drive first boot device ?

Malmedicine

stanley1 wrote:

is your hard drive first boot device ?

Em think so. Tried repair and it failed, so decided to give it to the IT services guys in ucd. According to them windows has to be totally reinstalled. To say I am going fricking mental is an understatement. Supposedly virus.

Tom Dunne

TBH, that sounds like a fob off. Have they actually proved in any way that it is a virus?

Why did the repair fail? What error did it give?

ntlbell

Malmedicine wrote:

Em think so. Tried repair and it failed, so decided to give it to the IT services guys in ucd. According to them windows has to be totally reinstalled. To say I am going fricking mental is an understatement. Supposedly virus.

Nonsense,

lazy fecker!

kleefarr

Agree with the two above! Lazy way out. Did you check out that Microsoft link?

Malmedicine

tried fixboot did'nt work

Capt'n Midnight

on another PC with the same or newer version of windows format a disk

copy ntldr , ntdetect.com and boot.ini to it

if you are lucky it will boot, if not use the recovery console to copy the boot.ini from your machine to the floppy disk and try again

seamus

Malmedicine wrote:

Em think so. Tried repair and it failed, so decided to give it to the IT services guys in ucd.

Hah! I used to be one of them. They're very lazy, particularly when dealing with a student's laptop as a favour. Plus they're usually fresh out of college, or otherwise extreme entry level, so their experience or troubleshooting skills aren't honed

JMURPHY3

Hey have you left a floppy disk in floopy disk bay?????This can cause an error of this type to occur.Maybe that is ur problem!!!!!

Malmedicine

JMURPHY3 wrote:

Hey have you left a floppy disk in floopy disk bay?????This can cause an error of this type to occur.Maybe that is ur problem!!!!!

As i said before no. I'm working off a dell 640m laptop with no floppy drive . No usb contected. DVD drive but nothing in it. Ran the windows repair as stated in the link above with the copying of ntdetect.com and ntldr. The os was windows xp media edition I think. Nothing changed apart from now i can access F8 which i use'nt be able to do but goin g into any of these just results in restarting of the computer with the same results.

the_syco

Do you have XP or 2000? I ask as 2000 can do a repair install, whereby it keeps all your settings (and anything in the registry), but also reinstalls Windows, to SP1 (or whatever SP is on your Disc). Handy, as you won't have to reinstall anything after you do it. You'll just need to run some Windows updates.

=-=

As for saying it was caused by a virus, thats my excuse for it half the time. Mainly cos "it was going REALLY slow before this happened", and also "it started going slow after I got the internet....whats an anti-virus... oh, that, uninstalled it as I didn't think I'd need it"...

Malmedicine

the_syco wrote:

Do you have XP or 2000? I ask as 2000 can do a repair install, whereby it keeps all your settings (and anything in the registry), but also reinstalls Windows, to SP1 (or whatever SP is on your Disc). Handy, as you won't have to reinstall anything after you do it. You'll just need to run some Windows updates.

=-=

As for saying it was caused by a virus, thats my excuse for it half the time. Mainly cos "it was going REALLY slow before this happened", and also "it started going slow after I got the internet....whats an anti-virus... oh, that, uninstalled it as I didn't think I'd need it"...

Windows XP. As for virus thats what he (ucd guy) said but i dont believe it to be. I have sophos antivirus installed. The last thing i did witht the machine was start up the dell media centre thingy on it for the first time, then turned it off next morning hello €700 paperweight.

Hal1

Make a boot up disk either using a usb floppy or usb stick. Find some pc or laptop you can use for a few minutes. Log onto bootdisk.com to find instructions on how to make a bootdisk for your OS. It doesn't take long and once you have booted up you can add in the missing systems files and ntldr as a previous poster mentioned.

BoB_BoT

http://tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm

Read this site, has a handy bootable disk that will allow you to get back into your os and fix the problem. Have used it before to fix a friends computer. Simple but useful bootable script.

ZENER

Without exception, anytime I've had this error in a laptop the hard disk was damaged. Replacing NTLDR just puts it away from the bad sectors and might allow it to load so far but it'll surface again with another error sooner or later.

My advice would be to connect the drive to another machine, satisfy yourself it's not a virus by scanning it and get your files off it asap. Then get a new drive. Personally I'd never be happy to put a dodgy drive back into a machine.

My 2c.

ZEN

Johnny Storm

Malmedicine wrote:

tried fixboot did'nt work

Try bootcfg

Malmedicine

Tried most things and failed with them (boot discs got me past the sticking point asked me what operating system i wanted to use then automatically restarted laptop) finally got a disc that allowed me to boot onto a very basic operating system and got my files off it. Then did the windows install which was a pain but got the laptop back working so happy as larry at the moment, lost some programs though so a bit peeved but thanks everyone for all the recommendations