Troubleshooting NTLDR

[mrjd2636]

Here a couple of ideas I used to battle the “NTLDR is missing” error.

I received a computer that was loaded (I think with Windows 2000), and have tried numerous times to load Windows XP Pro on it. The computer would boot up fine and I would set the bios to boot to the CD-ROM, after that windows xp pro would start loading xp pro on the hard drive. After near completing the installation it would turn to the blue screen of death and say;

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

I tried booting up the computer with windows xp pro floopy boot disks but it didn’t do anything.

I took out the hard drive and loaded it to another working computer, and tried to execute the recommend: Bcupdate2 utility,
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320397) but when I tried to load the update to the corrupted hard drive it didn’t even recognized it.


Start, Run, type CMD,

Commands used:

C:\Documents and Settings\Gateway>a: <--- hit enter

A: bcupdate2 D /f <--- hit enter

D is the corrupted hard drive with the NTLDR error


More information on this here:

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:8EiPKQ4BtWYJ:geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Dec/tal20021227017767.htm+how+to+use+the+Bcupdate2+uti lity&hl=en












So I decided to format the D: drive

And I think its going to work

format drive : /Q /FS:file-system
Use the above command (where /Q performs a quick format of the drive, drive is the drive letter of the partition to format /FS:file-system specifies the type of file system to use [FAT, FAT32, or NTFS]) to format the specified drive to the specified file system. For example the following quick formats C partition as NTFS
FORMAT C: /Q /FS:NTFS
the following will do a full format of C as FAT32
FORMAT C: /FS:FAT32
*** Note: If a file system is not specified, then the existing file system format is retained.


http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm#How%20to%20Repair%20the%20Boot%20Sec tor:

[Paul Komski]

Some insight into the "ntldr is missing or corrupt" error is perhaps gleaned if it is understood that the message actually comes from the "problem partition's" boot sector. Wherever ntldr is so also should be boot.ini and these two files act as a dual act to begin the Win2K/XP boot processes and must correctly reference each other.

So even though the ntldr file may be actually missing or corrupt (and thus just need replacing with a good copy) it is FAR FAR more common for the boot.ini reference to the boot partition to be or to have become incorrect and for this message to appear because the boot references are just plain wrong. Most commonly this occurs after restoring image files or after a variety of partitioning manouvres.

The line in boot.ini under [operating systems] will have a numerical value (represented here by x) for the partition number of the installation to be booted {eg ....rdisk(0)partition(x)....} This boot partition is usually the same as the system (or active) partition but if for any reason this reference is no longer correct then an error message will appear.

What is not commonly understood is how the partition(x) value is enumerated. First of all primary partitions are counted and then any logical partitions. Unlike Linux, if there are two primary plus one logical partition, then the logical partition becomes partition(3) whereas under linux the first logical would always be partition(5) or more correctly /dev/hda5 with hda1 to hda4 always being reserved for the four partition table entries themselves.

What is even less commonly understood is how the primary partitions are enumerated - and this is often critical. Under both XP and Linux the first primary partition is counted as the first of the four possible entries in the PARTITION TABLE of the mbr. BUT GET THIS the first table entry does not necessarily match the first physical primary partition found at the beginning of the HDD. If you have four primary partitions on the drive the four partition table entries can be in any order - and it is the order of the partition tables that defines the recorded values disk(x) (or /dev/hdax under Linux).

Very similar messages referring to hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe can also often be rectified by editing boot.ini to correctly reflect a modifed mbr partition table. The alternative is to move the partition table entries around but without knowledge and specialised software this isn't so easy to do.

I am grateful to this post for identifying another cause - that being a fragmented mft - so that will be an interesting one to research.

[mrjd2636]

I gave up on trying to load xp pro and instead loaded win 98se on the machine, loading it worked great.