I have run into a problem installing XP Home

I took my XP Home CD and created a new CD with slipstreamed SP2 into it. I have repartitioned the hard disk to have a C: and a D: drive, put all the important stuff onto D: and formatted C: (FAT32)

Now when I boot from my new CD I get "NTLDR is missing - Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart". If I use my original XP Home CD it boots fine.

Why will the PC not boot from my new XP disc?

As far as I know, the XP setup process does not require ntldr.

I think you may not have made your new slipstreamed CD bootable and your system bypasses (doesn't even see your XP SP2 cd) and is trying to boot from HDD. Since you formatted your HDD, it can't find your ntldr to load XP - hence the error.

So, please confirm that you made your new SP2 CD is bootable and tell us what method you used to create the bootable CD.

See if your original XP Home CD as the ntldr file in the root (or anywhere for that matter) - I'm doubting that it does. If it doesn't, then that confirms that XP setup does not require ntldr.

Edited May 29, 200719 yr by spacesurfer

If you can get into windows or any of the PE versions, fix your boot.ini file so it points to the windows installation. I had this problem once and used a floppy with tons of boot files and I just went through them till I found one that works.

fix your boot.ini file

read at least the 1st post !

He has an install CD (->ROM) and an empty partition. Where's the boot.ini ?