NTLDR is missing... Gah!

[Zelenia]

So, my boyfriend and I just acquired a laptop. It was his sister's and we wanted to wipe it of all her stuff. We have a set of recovery disks for it and we began running them. It was going smoothly until we hit disk 4. It was telling us to insert disk 4, then click "ok" to continue. We did so...but, nothing happened. The pop-up wouldn't go away and it wouldn't continue. It simply froze.

It was getting late, so we decided we'd just shut it down and resume the next day. Now, I just started it up...and got the "NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to continue." error. I opened the drive and saw that disk 4 was still in there. So, I took that out and stuck in disk 1 again and restarted. It started up as it should and began running the recovery program. It seemed to be going well...until it said that it was finished and was successfully completed. o.O

"That can't possibly be right", I thought. "It didn't even get to disk 4!"

So, I restarted again and I haven't been able to get by the NTLDR screen at all, regardless how I start it. I tried starting it with disk 1, with disk 4, with no disk at all. I've tried starting it with the Windows XP boot disk and that won't work. I edited the boot order to look for the CD-ROM drive first and it made no difference.

I don't know what else to do!

Help, please? ^.^

~ Zel

[hiloed]

 Have you read here  http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm  ?It may help.

[abubucker0]

hey zelenia dis go here
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

[Zelenia]

Yes, I've read that. But, the problem is, that page lists 9 different causes...and I have no idea which one seems plausible. That's why I wrote my situation out in so much detail -- I hoped maybe someone would be able to suggest what might have gone wrong with it.

[drmsucks]

Suggest that you go to the computer manufacturer's website and look up "How to recover with Recovery Disks" (you get the idea!) for your model.

In other words, I'd research then start from scratch.

Best of luck.

[CBMatt]

hey zelenia dis go here
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

Did you not see the post above you?

[chaputikachagwa]

So, my boyfriend and I just acquired a laptop. It was his sister's and we wanted to wipe it of all her stuff. We have a set of recovery disks for it and we began running them. It was going smoothly until we hit disk 4. It was telling us to insert disk 4, then click "ok" to continue. We did so...but, nothing happened. The pop-up wouldn't go away and it wouldn't continue. It simply froze.

It was getting late, so we decided we'd just shut it down and resume the next day. Now, I just started it up...and got the "NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to continue." error. I opened the drive and saw that disk 4 was still in there. So, I took that out and stuck in disk 1 again and restarted. It started up as it should and began running the recovery program. It seemed to be going well...until it said that it was finished and was successfully completed. o.O

"That can't possibly be right", I thought. "It didn't even get to disk 4!"

So, I restarted again and I haven't been able to get by the NTLDR screen at all, regardless how I start it. I tried starting it with disk 1, with disk 4, with no disk at all. I've tried starting it with the Windows XP boot disk and that won't work. I edited the boot order to look for the CD-ROM drive first and it made no difference.

I don't know what else to do!

Help, please? ^.^

~ Zel

Conenct you current  HD disk sa a slave to another computer, back up your files ad do a clean installation of your XP

[Sid]

I don't know what else to do!
Help, please? ^.^
~ Zel

Conenct you current  HD disk sa a slave to another computer, back up your files ad do a clean installation of your XP

Chapuitk...In the future, if I were you, I'd read things a bit more throughly.

Anyway, back to the 9 possible causes:

Computer is booting from a non-bootable source.
Computer hard disk drive is not properly setup in BIOS.
Corrupt NTLDR and/or NTDETECT.COM file.
Misconfiguration with the boot.ini file.
Attempting to upgrade from a Windows 95, 98, or ME computer that is using FAT32.
New hard disk drive being added.
Corrupt boot sector / master boot record.
Seriously corrupted version of Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
Loose or Faulty IDE/EIDE hard disk drive cable.

Let's go through them and remove the ones that aren't valid:

Computer is booting from a non-bootable source.  -unlikely as you've already booted to the media (cd) before, and have the bios setup to boot from cd first...

Computer hard disk drive is not properly setup in BIOS. -Again, unlikely because it was working before, and you've not mentioned configing the bios in regards to HDD settings...

Corrupt NTLDR and/or NTDETECT.COM file. -It's possible, depending on what exactly is on Cd's 1->4

Misconfiguration with the boot.ini file.  -Again, depends on what CD's 1->4 actually are...

Attempting to upgrade from a Windows 95, 98, or ME computer that is using FAT32. -Doubt it, cus it was an XP install before...

New hard disk drive being added. -You didn't mention any hware changes...

Corrupt boot sector / master boot record. -Unlikely, but possible, again depends on what the CD's actually are

Seriously corrupted version of Windows 2000 or Windows XP. -Maybe.

Loose or Faulty IDE/EIDE hard disk drive cable. -Unlikely but possible, I would be surprised though.

Ok, so now we've done that we have:

Corrupt NTLDR and/or NTDETECT.COM file. -It's possible, depending on what exactly is on Cd's 1->4
Misconfiguration with the boot.ini file.  -Again, depends on what CD's 1->4 actually are...
Corrupt boot sector / master boot record. -Unlikely, but possible, again depends on what the CD's actually are
Seriously corrupted version of Windows 2000 or Windows XP. -Maybe.
Loose or Faulty IDE/EIDE hard disk drive cable. -Unlikely but possible, I would be surprised though.

And if we look at the common denominator of issues...we need some more info about the CD's.

What is actually on the CD's?  What's written on them, what do they actually do?  In other words, has CD1 got "Operating System" on it, 2 have "Drivers" etc...and when you put CD1 in, what happens on the screen?

Also, it might help if you could let us know:

What type of laptop is it? (HP, Dell, Toshiba...)
Have you got a seperate Windows XP cd?
How comfortable are you with NOT having the manufactuers stuff on the machine?

Sid

[abubucker0]

hey zelenia dis go here
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

Did you not see the post above you?

well actually i didn't see it......

[Zelenia]

Okay, so something is definitely wrong with the CD drive. My boyfriend did something to it to make it show an exclamation point next to the missing hardware in the boot order list in Setup. The laptop doesn't have a floppy drive, so obviously that had a "!"...but, it said there was no CD drive, either.

We just tried plugging in an external disk drive and it's not reading that either.

What is this telling us? >.<

[drmsucks]

What manufacturer and model is the laptop?

[Zelenia]

What manufacturer and model is the laptop?

Compaq Presario

[alan cummings]

SORRY TO SAY the only way to fix NTLDR is missing is to re instill a new windows xp software that is the only way

You might want to refrain from trying to help if you have no idea what you're talking about.
—CBMatt

[drmsucks]

What manufacturer and model is the laptop?

Compaq Presario

Model #?

[drmsucks]

SORRY TO SAY the only way to fix NTLDR is missing is to re instill a new windows xp software that is the only way

Alan - Please read the thread; they now have a hardware issue with the CD.