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NTLDR is missing

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  • 08-12-2011 10:24pm
    #1
    LeakingLava
    Registered Users Posts: 1,374 ✭✭✭


    Hey everybody. I am currently having a problem with my pc. It keeps on saying NTLDR is missing. I've searched a bit and everybody says that only xp/2000 use this NTLDR thing and believe me I don't even have a single clue what it is. Details:

    -I have two hard drives, one with windows 7, another with windows vista. The hard drive with win7 is partitioned into two, it was booting properly until now. I never use the vista anymore.
    -I was trying to add another hard drive and due to some reasons, I moved the second hard drive(the one with the vista) into the third SATA slot but I left my main hard drive in the first SATA slot and tried to put on the new hard drive(which has some problems of its own) into the second SATA slot.
    -Everything was fine until now. When I tried to boot it up with the new hard drive on, the boot thing says that NTLDR is missing. So as an attempt to resolve the problem(as I thought it was because of the hard drive) I removed the new hard drive and put everything back the way it is.
    -Now the NTLDR message is still there.
    -I have nothing in the CD Drive, no floppy drive or anything, plugged out all USB devices except mouse and keyboard(USB devices, not PS/2). And also, the monitor is plugged in.

    Now I really don't know what to do. If anyone has suggestions on what I could do, please do comment. Thanks a lot everybody for your time in reading this.


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    #2
    Serephucus
    Registered Users Posts: 7,180 ✭✭✭Serephucus


    Sounds like you might have boot information on another drive.

    With everything the way it was (originally), what drive are you booting from? (Basically, try all of the partitions. If one of them works that isn't the Win7 partition, then you have your boot data on something else.)

    My guess the hard drive boot priority got changed when you installed the new drive.


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    #3
    LeakingLava
    Registered Users Posts: 1,374 ✭✭✭LeakingLava


    Serephucus wrote: »
    Sounds like you might have boot information on another drive.

    With everything the way it was (originally), what drive are you booting from? (Basically, try all of the partitions. If one of them works that isn't the Win7 partition, then you have your boot data on something else.)

    My guess the hard drive boot priority got changed when you installed the new drive.

    Basically I am booting from the main hard drive which is the one with two partitions. Strangely enough, yes there are two partitions on the primary hard drive but when I choose the actual boot drive, the main drive just shows up as one drive and not two separate partitions. To sum up, I am booting from the main drive. I've actually tried turning off the secondary boot device(usually CD Drive) and the third boot(usually removable device) and still NTLDR is missing message. I've also tried plugging out the vista drive and same thing. I've also tried plugging my main hard drive into another SATA slot and same thing. I've also tried swapping the SATA cables of the two main drives(not the new one) just to see if it's a fault with the cable and same thing.


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    #4
    Serephucus
    Registered Users Posts: 7,180 ✭✭✭Serephucus


    Boot device isn't the same thing as hard drive partition.

    The first boot device should always be hard drive, you should then have a seperate section that lists your hard drive partitions, and their order, when booting from a hard drive. These are the things you want to move around and try booting from all of. Try boot from the Vista drive as well.


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    #5
    LeakingLava
    Registered Users Posts: 1,374 ✭✭✭LeakingLava


    Serephucus wrote: »
    Boot device isn't the same thing as hard drive partition.

    The first boot device should always be hard drive, you should then have a seperate section that lists your hard drive partitions, and their order, when booting from a hard drive. These are the things you want to move around and try booting from all of. Try boot from the Vista drive as well.

    Can the partition thing be done in the BIOS setup thing? Because that's all I have access to and I've been going to all the options and I didn't seem to notice something like that in there. i'll try and have a look again for that but I don't really think it's there. And about the vista drive, I think that drive has a fault but I guess it's worth a try. Thanks. I'll report back in a minute or so.


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    #6
    LeakingLava
    Registered Users Posts: 1,374 ✭✭✭LeakingLava


    Hey serephucus. I bloody LOVE you. In a quite serious but non-homo way. It's strange how my computer works but somehow, it wants the vista drive to be priority although I boot the win7 one. Really strange. It's working now but now I'll try to add in the new untested drive :)


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    #7
    Serephucus
    Registered Users Posts: 7,180 ✭✭✭Serephucus


    Have a look at EasyBCD. It lets you do a crapload of stuff, including moving your bootloader information to other drives, so you should be able to move it back to your Win7 drive.

    In the future, when you're installing Windows, make sure you only have one drive plugged in to avoid this.


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    #8
    LeakingLava
    Registered Users Posts: 1,374 ✭✭✭LeakingLava


    Serephucus wrote: »
    Have a look at EasyBCD. It lets you do a crapload of stuff, including moving your bootloader information to other drives, so you should be able to move it back to your Win7 drive.

    In the future, when you're installing Windows, make sure you only have one drive plugged in to avoid this.

    Now I find a new fault. when I plug in the new drive, it just sort of freezes on 'detecting IDE drive'. Another strange thing although everything is plugged into SATA slots. What do you think?

    It actually doesn't freeze on the detecting, it continues on after a few moments. I'll try do something with it. Thanks a lot serephucus. I'll come back in a bit.


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    #9
    LeakingLava
    Registered Users Posts: 1,374 ✭✭✭LeakingLava


    Hey there again serephucus. Update:

    -Somehow when the hard drive is plugged in, the computer sort of goes bonkers. I just don't know why. It makes win7 freeze at boot logo. What do you think is the problem? How can I ever work with the drive's setup(I was told before that the drive had a setup problem)? I don't know if it's advisable or highly-stay-away-from-it-dangerous but I tried plugging in the new drive after the computer booted up, and it just froze. What do you think is my next step?


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    #10
    Serephucus
    Registered Users Posts: 7,180 ✭✭✭Serephucus


    When you plugged it in while on, was it just data, or power as well?

    I normally wouldn't advise it, but if it gets detected, you can do a lot more with it. Do you have anything on the Vista drive that you need?


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    #11
    LeakingLava
    Registered Users Posts: 1,374 ✭✭✭LeakingLava


    Serephucus wrote: »
    When you plugged it in while on, was it just data, or power as well?

    I normally wouldn't advise it, but if it gets detected, you can do a lot more with it. Do you have anything on the Vista drive that you need?

    I left the power plugged in so I basically plugged in just the data SATA cable, then after that it froze. It didn't get detected, it doesn't get detected in the BIOS, it doesn't get detected on the startup thing and as I've said in a previous post, it makes the computer freeze on the win7 boot logo screen when I have it plugged in when I try to boot. In addition to all that, the 'detecting IDE drive' thingy is taking much longer than the usual 3-4 seconds. It takes about a minute when the new drive is plugged in but the computer still doesn't detect it.

    Well as you've said, the boot stuff most likely is on my Vista drive so yeah I do need that. But apart from that, I really don't think I need anything else from it. You see, the only reason why I have the vista drive is because it was my primary drive before and it cause some problems which made me basically reformat it but keep all my files in a folder called backup. I just don't want to take it out or reformat it or anything because of the 'just in case' times.


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    #12
    Serephucus
    Registered Users Posts: 7,180 ✭✭✭Serephucus


    Well can you not reformat it, then backup everything again?

    So the drive isn't detected at all? Not even in your BIOS?


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    #13
    LeakingLava
    Registered Users Posts: 1,374 ✭✭✭LeakingLava


    Serephucus wrote: »
    Well can you not reformat it, then backup everything again?

    So the drive isn't detected at all? Not even in your BIOS?

    Uhm. Why would I? I don't really care about it. I mean, if it's there great, if not, I wouldn't mind. I actually don't mind it being there. (I think you may be a little confused. I am currently trying to install a third hard drive, not the Vista drive(I actually really don't care about the vista drive)). I might do what you said about the boot stuff all being in win7. I will actually do that after I get this thing working.

    Actually, I just left it when it froze on the boot logo screen and it continued on by itself. I'm now on win7 but everything seems to be goin' crazy and I think it's because of the drive. I can't log into our wi-fi router. And the drive isn't here at all. Not in my computer, not in BIOS(checked earlier), not in the device management window, nowhere at all.


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