Computer won't boot up, help!

[Marthax]

Hi Guys!

I turned off my computer last night and it worked fine. When I woke up and turned on my computer, it says "NTLDR is missing". Whatta hell?! I have a SATA 200 GB HDD. What should I do? Any help will be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Marthax

[interminded]

First of all: Did you keep (by accident) a floppy in your floppy drive ?

Otherwise:

1) If you did some tweaking in your BIOS, reset it to default !

2) If not, take a Windows XP Bootable CD, let it boot, choose for REPAIR ®.

Don't waste time by simply copying the NTLDR-file from a floppy to the C:\ or the system32 folder.... it won't work.

Edited July 18, 2005 by interminded

[Marthax]

No, I don't have a floppy and I did not do a BIOS tweak. When you boot into the repair console, the HDD that you want to fix has to be visible right? Well, mine isn't because it's SATA which means that they need drivers. I guess I'll use raskrens method here to throw in the SATA drivers onto the XP cd so that my SATA HDD is seen. Or am I wrong?

[Zxian]

@interminded - That's actually the first thing I would try doing (re copying NTLDR from floppy to C:\).

@marthax - see if you can get your hands on a Win98 boot disk (you can find them all over the net). Copy the NTLDR file from a working Windows XP (or 2003) computer to the floppy. Use the copy command to copy the NTLDR file from the floppy to the system drive (probably C:\).

EDIT - actually ignore this... it's a SATA drive, which means that it won't be visible from the Win98 disk...

I think what intermided was talking about isn't the recovery console, but instead, doing a repair install (which I think might be a bit extreme at this point). I know that there are other methods of getting around this.

Edited July 18, 2005 by Zxian

[Marthax]

Copy the NTLDR file from a working Windows XP (or 2003) computer to the floppy.

I just said that I don't have a floppy disk, meaning that I don't have a floppy drive at all.

Edited July 18, 2005 by Marthax

[interminded]

marthax,

I also have a serial ATA HD, but whenever I boot from CD to do a new install or whatever, the partitions on my harddrive are always visible.

The fact that SATA needs drivers, as you mention it, is new to me.

I don't say you're wrong, but I've not heard of it yet..

@Zxian:

I'm only reffering from my own experience.

I had this problem also once, and i copied the file to every folder I thought was important, but it just didn't work.

@Marthax:

Have a look at this site, there're a couple of solutions:

NTLDR ISSUE

GOOD LUCK !

Edited July 18, 2005 by interminded

[Marthax]

What SATA controller do you have?

[interminded]

I don't know exactly, it's an onboard controller (Fujitsu Siemens)

Unfortunately, I'm @work right now, so I can't check it..

[Marthax]

I see, well it's probably because you have a controller that is detected upon startup and doesn't need drivers. Unfortunately, not all controllers are like that. I know for certain that my (Silicon Image) and the Intel - controllers require drivers. Well, I'm on my way creating a cd with slipstreamed drivers right now. I'll be done in approx. 15 min so I'll let you know. Thanks a lot for helping me out interminded

[interminded]

Well, obviously I am spoiled then...

Anyway, Good Luck and let me know how it "ends" ...

[svasutin]

copy

Ntldr

Ntdetect.com

Boot.ini

To a floppy

Your boot file should look like

***

[boot loader]

timeout=0

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Msft Win Xp" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

***

Or, since you are using SATA, you might need to replace multi(0) with scsi(0) for

***

[boot loader]

timeout=0

default=scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Msft Win Xp" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

***

If neither of the two above work, then

If and when you open your computer, or look at the mfr's website, download the sata drivers.

Copy the three files of same name .cat, .sys, .inf to the floppy.

Now rename the .sys file to

Ntbootdd.sys

So your floppy contents would be:

Ntbootdd.sys

someDriver.cat

someDriver.inf

Ntldr

Ntdetect.com

Boot.ini

If that don't work, I suspose we could get into the System Recovery Console, but it might be easier to just reInstall (not reformat) windows.

Edited July 18, 2005 by svasutin

[Marthax]

I just said that I don't have a floppy drive, but I'll do the same thing on cd and it should work to, right?

EDIT: I created a XPCD with slipstreamed SATA drivers, but then Setup skips the first window where you can select "recovery console" and goes to next step where you are supposed to choose a HDD for format Why the hell does it skip the first window for?

EDIT2: I did as you told me to svasutin and it didn't work. I suppose that you gotta have some kind of boot image to be able to boot from cd. What now? I guess that the only thing that's left is to reinstall windows, or do you have any other ideas?

Edited July 18, 2005 by Marthax

[svasutin]

do you have nero?

[Marthax]

Yes, I do.

[svasutin]

try this with nero. I think this is the correct process

First, create an ISO CD and copy the files stated above.

Press CTRL+R and select Image Recorder

Burn the image to your desktop, call it boot

Once nero is finished (a few seconds)

Press CTRL+N and select CD Boot

Select boot.nrg

[edit] the next step i'm uncertain

and floppy emulation

Now copy the same files again to your CD

Press CTRL+R and select your actual recorder

Burn your CD and use verify

Edited July 18, 2005 by svasutin