NTLDR is missing

[jojasary]

sorry if this is the wrong category.. i didnt know where to put it.

ok so i built a new coputer and today i went to start it up, which i wasnt really sure how to..

and i get this NTLDR is missing message.... and i dont really know what to do. joy.

[idyllic]

jojasary,

give us a little more info on your system: what type of hardware, what type of OS, etc. Did you "upgrade" an existing OS or did you load one fresh? The more info you can provide the better someone will be able to help you.

idyllic

PS: you will prolly get more help if you put this type of request in the "Operating Systems" forum.

[cherrypie]

its win xp right? can u boot to safe mode?

[Jason425]

make sure you're booting off the right device

[james]

NTLDR is missing just means your MBR got messed up or something along those lines and the program that is used to get windows to turn on can't be found. This isn't a big deal. There are several ways to fix this. I believe the most common is to pop in your XP/2000 cd, boot, get to the command line, and do a fix /mbr or something along those lines. i'm heading out right now, so i can't grab yo uthe exact command, but googling or MS's technet site should prove to be very useful. I wouldn't be too worried about this unless you are getting many errors. That could indicate that your harddrive is dying and that it is corrupting files on it (which means you should get those files off that harddrive as soon as possible). but htat's only if you start getting many errors about different files being missing/corrupt. one or two or so shouldn't be thought of as a big deal

[cherrypie]

it could be as a result of malware or a virus..... that file has become corrupt or deleted...... but ya..... not usually too hard to fix as James said...

[jojasary]

ok about my system....

New things
-Case
- MB SIS748|963L ASROCK K7S8XE
- CPU AMD|2400/266 ATHLON XP THOUROBRED
- 40 MB western Digital HD 7200
- 256 MB DDR 2700
- 450 Watt Power Supply

Used Items
- Floppy Drive
- 52X CD drive
- Geforce 2 64MB PCI card
- LAN Card



thats pretty much it.. and for the WIndows XP disk, I cant load it, whenever i put it in I get the sam error message.

[jojasary]

sorry for the double post but i re read all your resposes and had to note some things

there is nothing on the hard drive, so it couldnt be a virus... ive never even gotten xp to work yet. I cant even start up or anythings/

[Jason425]

... have you installed xp?

[jojasary]

NO. i cant, this error comes up.

[Jason425]

ok.. boot from the cd and install lol...

[vee_ess]

Make sure you are booting off the CD and the BIOS is set to boot from CD.

[delphineus462]

I am having the same problem with the error message. Did anyone ever figure this out?

[Jason425]

NTLDR is missing just means your MBR got messed up or something along those lines and the program that is used to get windows to turn on can't be found. This isn't a big deal. There are several ways to fix this. I believe the most common is to pop in your XP/2000 cd, boot, get to the command line, and do a fix /mbr or something along those lines. i'm heading out right now, so i can't grab yo uthe exact command, but googling or MS's technet site should prove to be very useful. I wouldn't be too worried about this unless you are getting many errors. That could indicate that your harddrive is dying and that it is corrupting files on it (which means you should get those files off that harddrive as soon as possible). but htat's only if you start getting many errors about different files being missing/corrupt. one or two or so shouldn't be thought of as a big deal

[cherrypie]

this should be in the OS section...... if you have already installed windows and this is coming up u need to re-install...

[Prometheus]

recreate the partiton i had this exact error


once booted just format and recreate the partition

[ybeddyj]

Well from the look/sound of things it seem that you/someone else had use win2k/Xp to write signature to the harddrive / create primary partition. this process usually sets the partition as active as well thus indicating that it may be booted from. this may pose a problem if u dont arrange the devices properly in your pc and your bios isnt set so as to provide the desired results. this as your xp cd wont recognize that u'r hard disk drive is clean so to start setup automatically.

What you need to do is make sure that you set the first boot device in u'r bios to be cdrom.
at boot stage the system will boot from the cd(*provided that u'r OS cd is bootable and you remember to put it in the drive prior to it checking for the cd*).
it'll give you about 5 seconds to press any key to boot from the cd (again) if you do press a key in this time it'll boot finally from the cd and start textmode setup process
Then you should be good to go

[twobells]

Do you have a external usb hard drive installed on your system?

Many times if i forget to turn off the external usb drive I get that exact message.
Basically the bios can't handle the confusion.

What is truly odd is that my new Asus SK8V (a awesome board) has USB 1&2 detection in bios yet the same thing happens if I don't turn off prior prior to shutdown or on booting.

TwoBells