Ntldr Is Missing

[Jeanstephen26598 0]

Hi

 

I am getting the error “ NTLDR is missing” at the time of booting my computer. How can I get rid of this problem…..Any suggestion will be appreciated.

[yordan 10]

This error message explains exactly what happens : ntdlr is missing on your hard drive.For emegency use, if you have a floppy disk drive, you can create a bootable floppy on another windows system, and put ntdlr and ntdetect on the floppy disk.If you boot off the floppy disk, it will see that you have a Windows install on your hard drive and will start your Windows.This will give you time to browse the net and see how to repair your Windows install. You can further boot off this floppy disk as many time as you want, simply it's not very comfortable.The repair by itself has a main step which is booting off the Windows install CD, access the cmd prompt and issue some command line commands. You will need the "administrator" password in order to do that.By the way, your topic was initially posted in the wrong section. That's why I moved it here.RegardsYordan

[Nik 0]

NTLDR file has been deleted from your windows registry. Now you need to either repair your windows by restoring this NTLDR file from your windows bootable CD or you can format your hard drive to install a fresh copy of windows.

[mahesh2k 0]

Even corrupted NTLDR also gives this message. So one thing you can do is either replace the NTLDR properly by reinstalling the OS. Or you can get the alternate NTLDR with set attributes keeping your drives in mind, then pasting to your boot drive. In second solution, you have to take your drive to friend or someone who has same OS like you and then copy the NTLDR from them. Instead of the second solution try and get your hands on your old installation disc. This will solve the problem by simple re-installation.

[grim reaper1666 0]

i have another issue which can cause ntldr to go missing, do you have multiple hard drives? if you do then check if the correct one (the one with the bootloader) is selected as the default drive in your bios. to get to the bios its usually by pressing f2 and check your drive configuartion different in different motherboards. i know this because it has happened to me before my drives decided that they were going to suddenly change which one is the main so i started to get the same error so i went and checked the bios and found my secondary drive had decided it didn't want to look at the back of the main drive anymore and jumped in front of my other drive. so don't think that the problem is automatically based in windows it could easily be in the bios. also if you was having a problem with it not being their a good trick is to put a old hard disk in and install an older os on that which wll create a boot manager which will allow you to load your nomral os thus nothing lost.

Edited December 18, 2010 by grim reaper1666 (see edit history)

[mahesh2k 0]

USB Hard drives usually don't cause any issues if they're not bootable. But if they offer any bootable operating system then surely they'll affect your bootfile as well. There needs to be modified NTLDR in order to get things work. If you are booting any operating system fro the USB or external drive then it is better to remove hardware device from the tray before you take it out or else this will cause problem. Also it is better to use USB drives over external drives so that you can avoid the bootup issue. I'm not sure about the BIOS because you don't need to use BIOS for USB Based drives. You don't need to be working with BIOS at all even if USB drive is bootable.

[grim reaper1666 0]

well what i am on about is that a usb drive would need to be set above the internal drives otherwise the computer will try to boot from the one set as the first usually a usb option would be their. what i was on about was purely internal drives i don't know if the original poster was on about a internal or external drive but in windows sometimes a swapped hierarchy on where the drives are meant to be means that they can't boot properly. something i forget to say before is to check that your drives cables are a plugged in properly if they are put them in a different slot (if you have a different slot for them) becuase i ve had ports go wrong before and stop temporaly recognising drives which messed my boot order up.

[tansqrx 0]

My apologies to yordon for restating what he already said but I will put part of his response in a different context.The ntldr error message can usually be fixed by running the Windows repair utility located on the Windows install disk. Every version of Windows is different so I will outline the general process.1. Insert the Windows installation disk into your CD or DVD drive.2. You may have to change your BIOS settings if the disk does not run after turning the computer on. This is usually accomplished by setting the first boot device to the CD/DVD or hitting one of the “F” keys during startup. In my case it is F12.3. A screen appears for a few seconds telling you to “Press any key to boot from CD.” As the instruction suggests, you should press a key.4. For Windows XP and earlier, wait for all of the setup files to load and then press “R” for your bad Windows install (http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm).5. For Vista and Windows 7, wait for the first screen to appear and then select “Startup repair” (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/products/windows).In both cases setup will overwrite all of the critical system files (including ntldr) with the ones on the setup disk. If this fails you can also try to reinstall Windows. Make sure you don’t format the drive and place the install in the same location as the damages install.I have successfully used both methods to repair fatal Windows problems including missing ntldr. If you didn’t do anything to explicitly kill your ntldr then you should seriously look at replacing your hard drive. Unexpected ntldr errors usually result from corrupted hard drive sectors and where there is one bad hard drive sector, there are usually many. The hard drive recovery tool that I use is SpinRite (https://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm) but it isn’t free. SpinRite can usually fix the problem without repairing the Windows installation. Certainly run a check disk (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2641432) after you get your computer back up and running.

[yordan 10]

My apologies to yordon for restating what he already said but I will put part of his response in a different context.

No problem, tansqrx, and thanks, your text is nicely explicited.Simply take care, you should always see a message like "do you want to repair?".
If you see something saying "do you want to reinstall", this means that you entered the wrong menu or you have the wrong CD (an OEM CD for instance), and you should go out of this menu because else you will start a fresh install, loosing all your data and all your installed sofware. So simply be careful to each time be "repairing" your install.