NTLDR is missing error

[morocco31477]

Something that has yet to be established. Are your drives IDE or SATA?

They are SATA. I slipstream the drivers with nLite when I reformat.

[jcarle]

Something that has yet to be established. Are your drives IDE or SATA?

They are SATA. I slipstream the drivers with nLite when I reformat.

Well unless nVidia's BIOS is special, you should be able to have the same effect by reordering the drives that you get changing the cables around.

[Jeremy]

I've also received this error message and the hell it's put me through is really p***ing me the f*** off.

I turned my PC on this morning and boom. NTLDR is missing. Everything was working *perfectly* last night.

I booted to CD, NTDETECT.COM and BOOT.INI were in the root of C:\, exactly where they were supposed to be.

I did a restore with Acronis True Image, error (to my bloody amazement persisted!)

I did a quick format, tried to carry on with Windows Setup, but the error persisted!)

I swapped the SATA channels in my BIOS and that worked, but I don't want to install Windows on my storage drive.

So now I'm doing a Full format to see if that makes any difference.

Edit - it made all the difference. I no longer received the error message and once that was out of the way I was able to restore with Acronis to where I was 5 days ago. I'll be making a backup each day on both systems from now on.

http://jeremy.zxian.org/?p=30

Edited December 8, 2006 by Jeremy

[LLXX]

I've also received this error message and the hell it's put me through is really p***ing me the f*** off.

I turned my PC on this morning and boom. NTLDR is missing. Everything was working *perfectly* last night.

I booted to CD, NTDETECT.COM and BOOT.INI were in the root of C:\, exactly where they were supposed to be.

I did a restore with Acronis True Image, error (to my bloody amazement persisted!)

I did a quick format, tried to carry on with Windows Setup, but the error persisted!)

I swapped the SATA channels in my BIOS and that worked, but I don't want to install Windows on my storage drive.

So now I'm doing a Full format to see if that makes any difference.

Edit - it made all the difference. I no longer received the error message and once that was out of the way I was able to restore with Acronis to where I was 5 days ago. I'll be making a backup each day on both systems from now on.

http://jeremy.zxian.org/?p=30

You should starting looking at a new hard drive. Good idea to be doing those backups

[Jeremy]

No, I believe my hard drive is fine. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

[jroc]

I've also received this error message and the hell it's put me through is really p***ing me the f*** off.

I turned my PC on this morning and boom. NTLDR is missing. Everything was working *perfectly* last night.

I booted to CD, NTDETECT.COM and BOOT.INI were in the root of C:\, exactly where they were supposed to be.

I did a restore with Acronis True Image, error (to my bloody amazement persisted!)

I did a quick format, tried to carry on with Windows Setup, but the error persisted!)

I swapped the SATA channels in my BIOS and that worked, but I don't want to install Windows on my storage drive.

So now I'm doing a Full format to see if that makes any difference.

Edit - it made all the difference. I no longer received the error message and once that was out of the way I was able to restore with Acronis to where I was 5 days ago. I'll be making a backup each day on both systems from now on.

http://jeremy.zxian.org/?p=30

You should starting looking at a new hard drive. Good idea to be doing those backups

someone has really mis-informed you..if you think NTLDR is due to a 'Hard Drive' going bad...maybe a IDE Cable....(very unlikely)...but has to due with Corruption or Booting

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

[jcarle]

No, I believe my hard drive is fine. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

You shouldn't "believe" it is, you should make sure if there's even a possibility of a doubt. Run your hard drive manufacturer's diagnostics on the drives to be sure, then you can say "I KNOW my hard drive is fine.".

someone has really mis-informed you..if you think NTLDR is due to a 'Hard Drive' going bad...maybe a IDE Cable....(very unlikely)...but has to due with Corruption or Booting

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

That's not entirely true. A dying hard drive CAN cause corrupting of a partition, boot sector, windows system files, etc...

In fact, quoted from the very page you link to:

7. Corrupt boot sector / master boot record.

Which can occur as a result of a defective or dying hard drive.

[jroc]

No, I believe my hard drive is fine. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

You shouldn't "believe" it is, you should make sure if there's even a possibility of a doubt. Run your hard drive manufacturer's diagnostics on the drives to be sure, then you can say "I KNOW my hard drive is fine.".

someone has really mis-informed you..if you think NTLDR is due to a 'Hard Drive' going bad...maybe a IDE Cable....(very unlikely)...but has to due with Corruption or Booting

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

That's not entirely true. A dying hard drive CAN cause corrupting of a partition, boot sector, windows system files, etc...

In fact, quoted from the very page you link to:

7. Corrupt boot sector / master boot record.

Which can occur as a result of a defective or dying hard drive.

lol..(I stand corrected)true but seldom..thats like also adding 'result of a car crashing into your house and hitting the computer'

but from the details of the post...it was due to an installation that went south.

Edited December 8, 2006 by jroc

[jcarle]

lol..(I stand corrected)true but seldom..thats like also adding 'result of a car crashing into your house and hitting the computer'

but from the details of the post...it was due to an installation that went south.

In this world anything is possible. I replaced a hard drive once because the owner had opened it to see what it looked like inside.

[Jeremy]

You shouldn't "believe" it is, you should make sure if there's even a possibility of a doubt. Run your hard drive manufacturer's diagnostics on the drives to be sure, then you can say "I KNOW my hard drive is fine.".

If there was a problem with my harddrive that would result in the loss of my NTLDR, then I'd experience other HD-related issues to associate with the possibility of a failing harddrive, right? Well, I'm not. I'm willing to bet it was due to a severely fragmented MFT record/index, which Diskeeper unfortunately does not defragment, yet PerfectDisk does. I've already defragmented it in hopes of preventing the problem from re-occurring.

But, I will run a harddrive diagnostic and report it back. No harm in doing that.

[LLXX]

A fragmented MFT has nothing to do with locating NTLDR, as that messages comes from the boot sector which may be corrupted.

The first parts of the platter surface to fail are, obviously, the ones that are used the most.

The boot sector is read every time the machine is booted, and its location also means that the HDD heads often rest over its track when the HDD is idling.

In summary: It's one of the more vulnerable areas.

[jcarle]

If there was a problem with my harddrive that would result in the loss of my NTLDR, then I'd experience other HD-related issues to associate with the possibility of a failing harddrive, right? Well, I'm not. I'm willing to bet it was due to a severely fragmented MFT record/index, which Diskeeper unfortunately does not defragment, yet PerfectDisk does. I've already defragmented it in hopes of preventing the problem from re-occurring.

But, I will run a harddrive diagnostic and report it back. No harm in doing that.

The first part, regarding disk failure, LLXX beat me to it.

The second, I wanted to mention, Diskeeper DOES defragment the MFT.

From within Diskeeper:

1) Right-Click on the drive, choose Boot-Time Defragmentation.

2) Check Enable boot-time defragmentation to run on the selected volumes.

3) Check Defragment the Master File Table (MFT).

4) Reboot.

[Jeremy]

A fragmented MFT has nothing to do with locating NTLDR

Link

SYMPTOMS

After you copy many files to the root folder of a boot volume that uses the NTFS file system, you may receive the following error message the next time that you restart the computer:

NTLDR is missing

Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart.

CAUSE

This problem may occur if the MFT root folder is severely fragmented. If the MFT root folder contains many files, the MFT may become so fragmented that an additional allocation index is created. Because files are mapped alphabetically in the allocation indexes, the NTLDR file may be pushed to the second allocation index. When this occurs, you receive the error message that is described in the "Symptoms" section of this article.

However:

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

This problem was first corrected in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2.

If that is true, then this shouldn't apply to me. But, I'd like to point out two screenshots:

From PerfectDisk

From Diskeeper

This particular area was fragmented in the 100s when I received the error. I'm no expert on MFT or Metadata, but I'm just saying it's a possibility this might be the cause of my error. I still intend to diagnose my harddrive as well with Ultimate Boot CD.

[jcarle]

If that is true, then this shouldn't apply to me. But, I'd like to point out two screenshots:

From PerfectDisk

From Diskeeper

This particular area was fragmented in the 100s when I received the error. I'm no expert on MFT or Metadata, but I'm just saying it's a possibility this might be the cause of my error. I still intend to diagnose my harddrive as well with Ultimate Boot CD.

The KB article you linked to, which I'd like to point out is only regarding the MFT (exclusively), is new to me as I have NEVER seen that happen on any machine, nor first-hand, second-hand or third-hand.

The screenshots are sure indicative of someone who does not keep his system defragmented, nonetheless, the fragmentation you point to has no influence on the boot sector. The MFT itself has 0 fragments, other files serve only as extended information or storage for NTFS.

Also, if you have a ~1GB USN Journal then you probably have an application installed that has enabled volume change tracking.

A corrupt $UsnJrnl or $LogFile would result in different errors then NTLDR missing, as seen in this KB article.

Edited December 9, 2006 by jcarle

[Jeremy]

The screenshots are sure indicative of someone who does not keep his system defragmented

I use Diskeeper 2007 so i shouldn't have to defragment my drive, as InvisiTasking should do it for me. But as I do the SETI@Home, I never have any idle resources for it, since SETI takes 100% CPU usage but in low priority. I suppose I should stop that, then.