NTLDR IS MISSING

[watersprings77]

My Windows XP Computer shows NTLDR IS MISSING and would not boot further - Cannot access the PC beyond that message despite several trials.  I need an urgent help please.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Welcome to ComputerHope.

I found this:
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

[watersprings77]

Thanx - I'll check it out.

[dslgeek]

That error can be seen if you left a floppy in the drive and the floppy is not a system disk.    Also, that happens if you put in a new drive and the BIOS treys to boot the new drive instead of the old one. And that happens if you have a boot system and you did something bad to the BOOT.INI file. This can also happen if you are using a boot manager and it gets messed up. 
Now the bad news. That happens when you Hard drive is failing. 
But it could just be that the BIOS got messed up. If the battery goes dead, your custom settings were lost and it goes back to the default.

[BC_Programmer]

dslgeek is right on a lot of points

that error is shown under varying circumstances 

although I'd never heard of the problem with boot.ini 

do you have the XP CD watersprings? 

you could attempt to perform a repair installation on XP, that might help 

It's also important to place a emoticon at least once per sentence even if that emoticon has nothing to do with the context.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

I like your use of smileys.

[watersprings77]

Thanks.  I tried with an XP re-installation CD - It went through all the way until installing Windows and got stuck now giving another error message: 'DATA ERROR (CYCLIC REDUNDANCY CHECK)' saying some files needed were not well downloaded and from there after one or two clickings, I'm returned to the beginning - The system is being restarted - over and over again.

I desperately need some assistance please - Thanks.

[Dusty]

You have never posted your computer specs, please give us some idea if we're attempting to deal with a laptop, notebook, desktop, what version of XP (Home, Pro, Media Center etc.) and what hardware you have (floppy drive, cd/dvd rom etc.).  What is the make/model of your pc?

[watersprings77]

Oh! I'm sorry.  I have a Desktop, XP Pro.  I have all the drives (floppy drive, cd/dvd rom) but I'm installing through the CD and the Make/Model is IBM/Aptiva

[Dusty]

Thankyou.   I suspect your hard drive is failing but....

XP only requires three files to boot and these are common.  They are NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and BOOT.INI.   Copy these three files to a floppy diskette from any pc running XP.  The only difference might be that Boot.ini could be set to boot from a different drive/partition than the one on your pc but let's try it and if there is a problem we can look for answers.

Put the floppy containing the three files into the floppy drive and boot from it.  (You may have to amend your boot sequence in bios to boot from the floppy first).   When those three files have been executed an attempt will be made to load XP from the Windows folder on your hard drive.   If successful copy Ntldr from the floppy diskette to the root of C:, shutdown, remove the floppy diskette and cold boot.

In my short experience the main cause for Ntldr to go awol is lack of maintenance on the system drive, when did you last delete unnecessary files and defrag C:?

Good luck