Installed new hard drive and now "ntldr" is missing message?

Installed new hard drive running xp, and keep getting "ntldr" is missing message? Hard drive is 80 GB Maxtor 7200rpm t/m ultra ata/133 8mb cache. Old one crashed, Can anyone help i tried microsofts solution but will not work? What am i doing wrong? I followed instruction and ran cd provided.

 

What are your bios settings? and is this a second harddrive ur adding in as a slave?

 

Welcome to the Board!

Do any of the following apply to the old drive;

1. Bios overlay installed?

2. GoGack installed?

3. Dual boot set up?

How did you reinstall XP to the new drive? If you didn't reinstall XP but merely used the cloning disk that came with the new drive, you cloned a crashed system and it will still need to be repaired. Probably a repair install would do but it may require a full clean install.

 

you dont need a dual boot up set up, unless you have 2 OS on the same system. Like i have, I have Fedora on one, and XP on the other drive.

 

I lowered my cholesterol.

 

Did you do a complete reinstall of Windows XP? Which Microsoft solution did you try? Take us through the process you followed so it is more clear.

 

Ok some more information. I am complete newbie here! I took old hard drive out and put new one in! One hardrive only I loaded the cd that came with it and followed instruction i took the easy roote and let it partion and everything. Then i tried and put the xp cd in i had and it gives me the "Ntldr" is missing message.

BIOS settings? I changed it so it boots cd rom first, is that what you mean?

1. Bios overlay installed?

2. GoGack installed?

3. Dual boot set up ....I have no answers to any of this? How do i find out?

 

It sounds like your cd-rom drive isn't bootable. You get the "NTLDR" error since that's XP's standard error when there is no OS installed on the primary drive. That's why I asked all those other questions. I was wanting to make sure we had all the gory details. Some of the older dual boot systems altered the MBR on the primary drive. I also needed to know if you had any other drives connected and if they may have overlays installed to work around some bios issue. Then I also needed to know if you ever had GoBack installed since it modifies the MBR on the boot drive, but that would apply only if you had a second drive hooked up and it was set "Active. "

It appears that none of that applies so we can move forward with the new information you have given.

I recommend that you get a boot disk and install using it instead of trying to boot the install CD, which apparently isn't going to work. With a good boot disk, you can work around that issue, which is probably hardware related. I'm assuming the cd-rom drive works but just isn't bootable. It must work or else you couldn't have read the Maxtor cd.

Get this XP Bootdisk creation file. Download it and run it. Follow the screen directions to allow it to create an XP Bootdisk for you. I assume you have a floppy drive and a blank floppy. If not you'll need to get some friend to DL it for you.
When you get the boot disk created, put it in the drive bay of the ailing box and boot from it. You may need to reset the bios to allow the floppy to read prior to the HD.
Follow the screen directions to do an XP install. It has all the tools you will need for the job. I would suggest that you format the disk once again just to be sure where you stand.

Post back if any ??

ps. I noticed your other thread in XP. Don't post there any more since it's probably going to get locked out. Posting the same problem in more than one area is frowned upon on this board.

 

Thank you very much for your reply Surfer Dude, sorry for posting twice but i thought i had posted in wrong area.

I will try and dl your boot disks, thank you fro providing!

JohnnyBeGoode

 

JohnnyBeGoode, Let's not overlook the obvious either. Perhaps you didn't save the BIOS settings after selecting to boot the cd-rom drive first. Take a look in there again to see if it "stuck. "

 

ok a couple of further questions? What should my Bios settings be? Do you mean my boot up order? That i saved for sure or is there more to it.

I ran disk that i created from your dl. changed dir and ran winnt.exe file.

Now i get this message. An interal setup error has occured could not find a place for a swap file. settup cannot contine...

????

I cannot see my c: anymore is that a problem. ?

 

Obviously your hard drive has a problem. Look on the cd that came with it for a diagnostic tool. If found, run it to verify that the drive is in usable condition. If no problems are indicated, repeat the partition and format procedure to ensure that you have an 80 gig hard drive ready for an install.

I'm intentionally ignoring your other questions for the moment to keep things clearer. We'll answer those later if need be.

 

Makes me wonder. Have you checked/set the jumpers on the drive? If you have two drives connected to the IDE (ribbon) cable, that new drive should be set as Master, the other drive should be set as Slave.
You could try setting the jumpers for both drives as Cable Select, let us know if you would like to try that (you may need to arrange them on the cable).
Go into the BIOS/CMOS settings at startup. See what the "Configuration" menu says for your drives. If your BIOS menu has "Detect Hard Drives ", run that, otherwise check in the configuration menu that "Master on IDE 0" is set to "Auto ".

The Maxtor diagnostic tool is PowerMax. (Avoid installing EZ-BIOS if at all possible!! )

Matt

 

Again guys thx for the help, I am learning alot here. Just to prove i am newbie! There should only be 2 cables attached to hardive right.

What shoud the jumper switches be and how do you chnage that?

In Bios it shows my hard drive as bing there. I only have the one.

I ran an ide dps selftest and it said Test Succeeded completion code 0
drive info. 81.9 location primary 0

 

So far so good. I think all you need to do is format the drive so it can be seen by the install program. Right now only the bios can see it. Since the bios does see it, the jumpers must be in the correct position. With a single drive they would be set at MASTER normally but some drives may recommend CABLE SELECT so follow what the manufacturer recommends.

Go ahead and attempt the install once more from the floppy. This time look for the option of formatting the drive. You must do that before the install can take place. I think that's why you got the error before.

Read the instructions for Installing Windows XP Home. read it enough times until you know what to expect when you get ready to go for it.

If you stumble somewhere during the install, report back at which stage you were by comparing to the step numbers in those instructions.

Good luck.

 

Could there be a problem with my mother board i get same error messages even if i put old drive back in and boot!

 

That's a definite possibility. Memory can also cause some strange symptoms. Substitute some known good or pull each half if you have a pair of sticks in the board. Make sure you have the jumper set as master. Make sure you have the cables attached properly. Normally the red wire on the four cond. power cable faces the data cable direction and the data cable red striped wire faces the power cable direction. That assumes it's plugged in properly at the board. Most recent plugs can't be inserted incorrectly since thay have indexing built in.

Keep plugging away until you get it. Report back any news.