NTLDR is missing

[poshman]

Hi Helpers, when I turn on the PC at home I am getting a message "NTLDR is missing" press ctrl + alt + del to restart, when I have done that it just returns to the same page

I have a speedtouch box ( is that a modem ? ) which used to light up green USB and ADSL but they dont now, when I press the 3 buttons the USB flashes red but then just goes off so I dont know if that has anything to do with it
There is also another black box which is connected to it that seems ok has a green light

I have tried to do a recovery programme but a message comes on after a while saying " error during extraction process error detail.. permission denied

I have orange broadband windows xp ....hope someone can help cheers P M

 

[Doc Lenny]

Hi Poshman

Could be as simple as the system trying to boot from some media other than your hard drive, so remove all media including usb devices, CD's and Floppy disks and try and reboot.

If still having a problem what recovery steps have you taken?

Is your Hard drive being detected in the bios?

 

[Doc Lenny]

Some good advice from Iggy here

//www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=42148

 

[poshman]

Thanks for that Doc I have printed off that and from compuer hope site and will try and sort out before my facebook/ myspace Daughter throws a wobbly

 

[gcol]

Only had that one time - I'd left a floppy in the floppy drive and it was trying to boot from it. The relief was wonderful when I realised.

 

[Spark123]

I had a similar problem too, the SATA cable had come out one of the hard disks. When I put it back in, I had to go into bios to tell it the correct boot sequence also.

 

[poshman]

Not much luck really, phoned the 50p a min line told me to take it to a comp expert as its corrupt

 

[Barsteward]

Had this a couple of times myself.
Try this:


Insert the Windows XP bootable CD into the computer.
When prompted to press any key to boot from the CD, press any key.
Once in the Windows XP setup menu press the "R" key to repair Windows.
Log into your Windows installation by pressing the "1" key and pressing enter.
You will then be prompted for your administrator password, enter that password.
Copy the below two files to the root directory of the primary hard disk. In the below example we are copying these files from the CD-ROM drive letter "E". This letter may be different on your computer.

copy e:\i386\ntldr c:\
copy e:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\


Once both of these files have been successfully copied, remove the CD from the computer and reboot.

 

[poshman]

Thanks Barsteward, I have read about that, Would I have had a bootable CD when I bought the PC , if so I must have lost it where would I buy one P C world ?

 

[Softus]

poshman, with no CD you'd be better off taking the machine to be repaired.

Even if you buy a CD (costing perhaps £80), and copy the files as suggested, this is not guaranteed to fix the problem. You'll still have to deal with the cause of the corruption, which could be hardware (e.g. faulty disc media), software (e.g. virus infection), or various shades of grey involving both hardware and software.