NTLDR is missing.....different issue then the other topic...

hello all, i know i'm new but i really need some help, if someone wouldn't mind? ok i can't boot to my drive, it boots to a screen that says NTLDR is missing press ctrl+alt+delete now the difference is that its a slave drive with no operating system, now i really really need the data off of there, its very important, is there anyway i can fix the drive without formatting or loosing anything on it or is there a way to transfer the data off of there? please someone help, thank you in advance.

[Tyler]

Well if it's a slave drive with no operating system, why are you trying to boot it? I'm lost here :P

Why not just boot up windows on a primary hard drive and then access the slave through windows (D: drive I assume).

yea...why are you trying to boot from the slave drive if it has no OS...alight but ne way i ran into the same kinda thing awhile ago what have to go its repair the NTDLR file or reinstall windows...the NTDLR file boots everything i think i think you might just be able to pop in the OS disc and do whatever you want.... i also ran into a problem with another comp and it was with the NTDLR file and it turned out my memory was bad...so yea lol try that

ha ha what they said....

This is the fiancee' now, and it's my slave drive. Let me try to clarify here.

The slave drive used to be accessed easily (yes it was the D: drive). I accessed it via windows, which was running on my C: drive. One day, I had to do a hard shut down because I froze up and it came up to scandisk telling me every single sector in my D: drive was unreadable.

The error he is getting happens when he tries to boot to the slave drive to see if he can access any of the files. How do you specifically repair the NTDLR? I'd just be happy if I could retrieve the files, burn them to a CD, and THEN reformat the slave. I have a lot of important things on it and I'd hate to loose it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Tyler]

So there is a NTDLR error when you try and access the drive through windows? Or is just won't work at all?

hmmmm well won't get ntldr error when accessing the drive as just a slave thats a boot only error..... so you can't boot the computer at all? or it just won't boot from the d: drive?

ntldr errors only occur during boot up, basically they load the OS into memory, so after the system is booted up your computer won't use the file again till next time you boot up..... so it makes sense that if you are trying to boot from the d: drive you will get that error because all it would be formatted with is the file system no OS or anything like that....

if you are booting from the c: drive and still getting that issue then the NTLDR file is broken..... you can replace by copying NTLDR from a boot disk, or reformat the c: drive...... anything on d: should be intact

if you are trying to grab data from a dying disk, i have one word for you: knoppix. Googling knoppix and something like data recovery ought to prove very productive