Replacing missing NTLDR file in Vista

Snickers Man

There have been a few posts about dealing with this problem in Windows XP, but I had to sort it out today for a Dell PC running Vista Home, and although I made copious use of a "how-to" page found on the Web, I still needed to tweak the procedure slightly myself.

I am a "lay" techie, ie not a professional and not formally trained but I can have a go at following manuals and self help guides. I say this merely as a warning to tyros who might be tempted to follow this path. Or to flag it up to more technically competent people here who may have warnings about the effects this procedure may have. I defer to people with greater competence than myself; all I can say here is that what follows worked for me.

Our notebook, a Dell Inspiron 1525, wouldn't boot up. All we got was a message saying "NTLDR missing. Press any key to restart"
Doing so, only brought the same message up again.

As the machine is out of warranty (just) I had the option of paying an exorbitant one-off support charge (<€90) or trying to fix it myself. I opted for the latter.

I found this page on the net and it works well but there is one step they don't tell you about. Maybe it's because they expect only techies will use it and that they would know what to do anyway, but for the brave amateur here goes.

I eventually had to go for "Step 3, Manually repairing the Vista Bootloader"

I booted up from the Operating System Disk which Dell provided with the computer. Stick it in the drive, power on and hold down F12 immediately to give you the boot options. Select the "booting from CD/DVD" option. Having selected the "Repair" option, as described on the neosmart page, I then selected the Command Prompt option.

I then followed the instructions as described
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
e:\boot\bootsect.exe /n60 all/force

(NB: E is my DVD drive. It might differ on other computers)

The Neosmart page then tells you to delete the BCD file with the command
del c:\boot\bcd

What it doesn't tell you is that bcd is a hidden system file and therefore the del command will have no effect. What you have to do is change the attributes of the bcd file before you try to delete it.
So before typing del c:\boot\bcd you must type in the command

attrib C:\boot\bcd -s -h

This will reveal the file to the user and enable the delete command to be executed.

I then turned the machine off. REbooted normally and (touch wood) it all seems to be working properly.

Some caveats: I would not have attempted this myself if the machine was still in warranty. The Dell support staff are very good. It is also possible to extend your warranty for a year or two. It might be worth considering.

However, the unkind (and I include myself in that) might say that tech support is all very well but shouldn't the machine work properly without the need to talk to those nice people in India in the first place?

So fixing it yourself is the third option I would try. The second would be to call Dell tech support armed with a warranty (you get a year's as standard when you buy the system and the option to extend it for a fee).

But the first option would be not to go for an Inspiron 1525 at all. Ours is just over two years old and in that time it has had two replacement power supplies, and a replacement motherboard and hard disk (which were replaced under warranty). It really is a cheap and flimsy piece of crap.

But then it only cost about €500. I think you really do get what you pay for.

kildaremum

Hi Snickers Man - hope you're still keeping an eye here. I have followed your instructions on the NTLDR issue but cant get past the delete the BCD file part.

Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 6400 - about 4 years old - and I'm not terribly technically minded, i.e. I haven't a clue as to what I'm doing.

I think the DVD drive in my laptop is the D drive and I don't know whether I should be putting in "attrib C etc" or "attrib D etc" but I have tried both and neither seems to work.

If you can help I would really appreciate it (I realise that you won't know my dvd drive but I will assume it is D for now)

Next thing, would this result in all the documents and pictures on the laptop being deleted.

Any help appreciated.