NTLDR is missing??

aclane

A friends PC has gone t*ts up. When i try booting it, it says "NTLDR IS MISSING". I've ran SCANDISK from a Win98 boot disk, found some errors and fixed them but still get the same message appears.. Anybody???

sci0x

a) Boot the computer with a Windows 95 or Windows 98 Startup diskette or another bootable diskette with sys.com on it.

b) At the A:\> prompt type:

sys c: <press enter>

C) After pressing enter you should receive the prompt "System Transferred". Once the file system has been transferred reboot the computer without the diskette and attempt to reproduce the error.

aclane

Thanks Denis, I'll give it a go. Let you know how I got on tomorrow...

aclane

Ok, I did that and when i reboot the following appears:

MS Win 98 Startup Menu appears and the following:

Warning: Windows has detected a Registry/Configuration error.
Choose, Command Prompt only, and RUN SCANREG.

I tried running SCANREG but it's not letting me...

astrofool

heh, that usually appears when u try booting up with a non bootable floppy disk in the computer.

empty all the drives (floppy/cd-rom) and boot and see what happens

aclane

Nah, all drives are empty. I decided to repair the OS with the Win XP Pro OS disk, but now the pc is asking me which OS i would like to use: WinXP Pro or MS Windows (no version displayed).

I can run WinXP Pro without any problems but why is it displaying MS Windows?? It shouldn't be there. If i try to run MS Windows (no version displayed) it says the following:

MS Win 98 Startup Menu appears and the following:

Warning: Windows has detected a Registry/Configuration error.
Choose, Command Prompt only, and RUN SCANREG.

As what happened before.

I just want to get rid of MS Windows, whatever it is.

fisty

theres a fix for this in the microsoft knowledge base.


www.microsoft.com

carbsy

Just came across this thread ... what on earth are ye after getting this poor lad to do? Booting from Win9x bootdisks? mother of god :rolleyes:

The problem here is either a missing or corrupt NTDLR file so what you should have done originally was to boot from the WinXP cd and choose the recovery console (assuming you didnt install it beforehand).

Then just copy across the missing NTDLR file to the system partition (boot partition is called system partition under NT but both are usually the same drive).

That would have solved the problem orginally.

carb.

P.S. The reason you are getting an MS Windows version boot menu option is because of what Dennis told you to do (?????) , don't be alarmed Just edit the boot.ini file residing on your system partition and remove the offending entry.

Webmonkey

WTH booting with windows 98 disks? NTDLR is obviously an NT problem ie. Running Windows xp or 2000.
NTDLR is the boot file in the boot sector of the drive.

Boot a Windows XP cd, run the recovery console.

Run the command:

fixboot [drive:]

Where drive is the letter of your drive. prob C

===
If that doesn't work run the FIXMBR

tell us how you get on. I've more solutions if that doesn't work. But i believe all you have is an invalid boot sector

Edit:
Oh yeah forgot to tell you
Don't bother with sys c: Sys C: does not restore the NT boot loader (NTLDR). It only restores the Windows 98 system files (Config.sys, MSDOS.sys, etc.)
=====
Yet another way:

Boot with a windows 98SE start up disk. Run: FDISK /MBR
This will also fix the boot loader. But only use this method if you don't have a XP/2000 CD to run the recovery console from

aclane

Thanks everyone,
Win is booting fine but i'm still getting the version boot.

Carbsy, you said to edit the boot.ini file in the system partition..
I haven't got a clue how to do this.. Could you point me in the right direction?? Thanks:)

Zab

Go to Start->Run and enter "notepad c:\boot.ini". You want to get rid of the line that lists the OS you are trying to get off the boot menu.

Zab.

aclane

Thanks Zab.......:)

Webmonkey

Or you could use the BootCFG /rebuild command in the recovery console to rebuild the boot.ini file. Maybe you might feel more comforable this way

carbsy

Easier way still ... you could delete the boot.ini and NT will recreate it.Good to see we've helped in some way!

carb.

Saruman

Nice one denis

Did you sort it aclane? Another way is to go to system properties, advanced, startup/recovery and at the top make sure XP is the default load.. then click edit and it will bring up the boot.ini so you can adit.. the only reason you would do that rather than start\run\boot.ini is that i think it bypasses the read only attribute, where as the other way its usually read only so you cant save the changes. Not positive about this.

Carbsy when you delete the boot.ini and it makes it again.. does it make a new blank one? Or restore a backup complete with her line for windows98?

carbsy

Originally posted by Saruman

Carbsy when you delete the boot.ini and it makes it again.. does it make a new blank one? Or restore a backup complete with her line for windows98?

Creates a new blank one that defaults to the base OS installed if I remember correctly.

carb.

aclane

Nice one Saruman, you were right. By using start run the boot.ini file could not be edited but by going to system properties I could.

Easy when you know what you're doing...

Thanks:)

Saruman

Good to hear aclane, you can use start, run but you need to open the file properties first and change the attributes. Its just quicker the way i told you.. quicker for me that is.. i dont have to type out how to change attributes of a file

Webmonkey

aclane can you tell us how u actually sorted the NTLDR problem

edit
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whoops u said that you repaired the os. Easy way out of it
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