NTLDR who?

[SammyJ]

What's up folks!

Well, im just screwing around with my old box, slapping in some new pieces trying to salvage whats left of it...

I was having a couple posting problems, figured out I have to set the jumper setting on my IBM drive to 15-head or what not.

Anyhoo, now, when Im done booting up, i get a message that says:

NTLDR is missing
Press any key to restart

And I can't get any further than that.
I've tried alternating the boot sequence, but pretty much as soon as the bios finishes loading, I get this message.

I've no idea what to do next.

Any suggestions?

[AzKidd69]

ntldr is used for winNT, 2k and XP.. So it's probably missing....

IS the drive formatted as fat32 or as NTFS.. if fat32 you can fix it with a win9x boot disk, it it's NTFS I haven't played aorund enought with it to be able to fix problems with NT, 2K, or XP

for fat 32 try copying ntldr from the install cd to a floppy then put it on the root of c-drive..

[SammyJ]

The drive is formatted as Fat-32. Odd thing is, all the fixes point to me rebooting with a boot disk for windows 98/95.

When I do try to load up with any boot disk whatsoever (even without one), it keeps telling me the same thing.

I can't get past the bios booting from any cd or any diskette!!

[800XL]

A) You have an NT/2k formatted "bootable" (I use the term loosely) floppy in the floppy drive, take it out.

B) Assuming you don't have the first issue , the system is having some problems finding the bootsector on the hard drive, probably because you had to change the drive geometry to make it work and that moved things a bit. If you can stand to have the OS reinstalled (or are planning to anyway) then do so. If you are installing 2k or XP I believe it should take care of the problem. A 9x install may not cure it automatically. Boot with a Win9x startup disk and type "fdisk /mbr" (minus the quotes, did I get that / right or was it \... try both) That should replace the NT style bootsector on your drive with one from DOS/9x.

If you really need to save the contents of the drive, it is a little more tricky, or less depending on your experience. Basically, you need to run the install for whatever OS in on the drive (NT, 2k or XP apparently) and repair the bootsector and/or MBR (aka Master Boot Record) Just pick the options for repair as they come up, and look for an option regarding boot loader/etc. HOWEVER, changing the geometry of a drive with data on it is not generally good for the data. If you really need something off this drive, change the jumper back, put it in another machine, and get your info off of it before trying anything.

[NDC]

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

[SammyJ]

Unfortunately, all of your suggestions do not seem to work with this case.

I can't boot up with a diskette! No matter what type of boot disk i try (95/98/ME/2000 (the 4-set)) it still gives me the same thing. It's as if it simply disregards my a: drive, my cdrom drive, and simply goes on to load that error message.

Since then, I've reformatted the HD into NTFS format. And it's still giving me the same thing...

NTLDR is missing
Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to restart

And I can't do anything past that...

The drive (12 gig IBM) im using is totally blank. Theres nothing on it. I intended to boot from the cd-rom to install 2k on it. I checked it in my other machine and it works fine.

Is there any way to "reset" the MBR/ master boot record?
The bios is Amibios 1996 AP5V/Ap5Vm...

[hirschY]

Did you set the IBM drive back to when it was working?
Also, sounds like a new BIOS would be a good thing

Update the BIOS first, then make sure that the BIOS finds all the devices, HD, memory, CD and such.
Make sure the boot location is set as follows:
Boot from Floppy
Boot from CDROM
Boot from IDE0 (or HD 1)
This way it will look for a bootable floppy, if not present, then look for bootable CD, then the HD.
Just make sure you dont leave a bootable floppy or CD in the machine when powering on, or it might not boot to 2000.

After you get it working, you can disable the boot from D, but I always like to keep the floppy, just in case

Let us know

[SammyJ]

Well...
I re-reformatted the HD in FAT32 mode. Then I copied over all of the system files of a regular diskette on the hard drive.

I tried again, and the same thing occurs. I strongly think its a mobo problem @ this point. In any case, the mobo is soooooo old I doubt I'll be able to update/flash it. (especially considering i can't get past the posting).

Oddly enough though, if i alter the boot sequence, now it simply posts the 2nd half of the bios, the green energy pollution icon appears in the top right, and it stalls there...

I think I'm going to use that mobo as a frisbee.
:/

[eweruk]

Did you just format or fdisk the drive as well? Use fdisk or partition magic to wipe out the partitions and then re-partition the drive, format, and install.