NTLDR is missing

By HPMCommander
in Microsoft (Windows)

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Grand Master

HPMCommander

Posted
Posted

I had two partitions on my hard drive, one with what was left of a Windows XP Pro installation that I wasn't using, and one with a Windows XP Home partition that I used primarily. The Windows XP Pro partition was set as active, and there was a boot.ini file on that partition that pointed to the XP Home partition, and it would always boot fine.

So, today, I wanted to install Fedora, so I deleted the Windows XP Pro partition, expecting that the Fedora boot loader would point to the XP Home partition and I'll be able to boot both Operating Systems... but alas, it doesn't work that way.

I got the following message upon boot:

NTLDR is missing
Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart.

So, I went to the MS support site and went through all their hoops (copied NTLDR and ntdetect.com from my Windows XP home cd to c:\ (XP Home partition).

Now, when I try to boot, it just reboots the whole machine right after the PC loads (after BIOS info etc.)

I tried making a boot floppy using this guide.

When I use the boot disk, it gives me this:

Windows NT could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. Please check the Windows NT (TM) documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information. Boot Failed.

I also tried the thing through the recovery console thing, to no avail.

Help! I just want to be back in my XP Home installation again!!

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moeburn

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i've gone through this problem a dozen times, so i think i can help.

NTLDR isn't the only thing that's missing. Everything is missing. NTLDR just happens to be the first thing the windows boot loader tries to load off the partition. Your boot loader is still trying to boot off the old partition. You need to set the new partition to 'active' using a bootdisk partition editor that supports NTFS partitions (unless you were using FAT32).

I used to have a cd with hundreds of these little programs when i was trying to fix this problem myself, but alas i don't anymore. You shouldn't have too much trouble finding a dos partition editor and a dos bootdisk. If you need a certain 'magic' partition editor, PM me.

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Explorer

Cracell

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ugh, i hate problems like yours

I had a job once with someone with what your problem sounds like, my suggestion is use an xp install disk, to reinstall windows or wutever they call it without erasing data on the drive

this won't get fedora to work, but you can be back on windows, but of course you have to reinstall everything

personnaly I would rebuild just to access the drive (unless you have another computer to do that from) then take all needed files and settings off of it and format, then reinstall windows then fedora

hope you fix it

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Grand Master

HPMCommander

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okay... i tried that boot disk and i got the following message:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Please reinstall a copy of the above file.

I looked in the i386 folder on the XP Home install CD, and all it has is hal

There's no .dll extension on it...

What do you folks reccommend?

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moeburn

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  HPMCommander said:
Well, here I am in a clean install of XP... and so I've got no personal settings, nothing... just a default user. What'd be an easy way to transfer my files and settings from my old partition to the new one?

theres no easy way to do anything in recovering XP. If you never disabled systemrestore, your old registry files (hives) are in c:\System Volume Restore. Your current registry hives are located in c:\windows\system32\config. To restore the old ones, boot to the recovery console with your XP Pro cd and copy over to the new ones. That might work, but it doesn't always. If it doesn't, you'll have to make another clean install.

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Neowinian

keystroke13

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If you saved all your files locally (desktop, My Documents) then everything is in your profile located here C:\Documents and Settings\*Loginname*. Simply open that folder select all and copy it's contents. Go to your primary XP partition and copy those files to your new profile located in C:\Documents and Settings\*Loginname*

That will restore your desktop, my documents, favorite places, etc. If you saved your work outside your profile and on your defunked partition you can kiss those files bubye

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