two new hard drives - NTLDR is missing

Hello there,
I have an IDE drive set to cable select in the jumper settings, and I got two new perfectly working SATA hard drives from a friend of mine, I did the physical installation of the SATA drives and started my computer and set the SATA drives to auto in the BIOS, saved and exit... then nothing much happened other than me getting a black screen with a white blinking dot/line in top left corner. So I rebooted and got into the menu where I select what to boot from, I chose primary IDE drive and xp started as it should. I knew I had to format the new hard drives so I did and that worked out fine, I copied some files to both just to test them. I though that maybe my computer didn't start because the two SATA drives weren't formatted, so I rebooted again just to check... and what do I get? well, the infamous "NTLDR is missing" message showed up. So I rebooted again and went into the menu where I choose what to boot (again), but this time I selected Hard Drive C: instead of Primary IDE, which only got me to the NTLDR message again. So I did the same again but selected Primary IDE instead and xp started as usual. I took a peek into the C:\I386 folder and it contained the NTLDR file (and the NTDETECT file too).
I've had a look around, read through a lot of the post on this and other forums, I've been to microsoft's knowledge base and http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm but I can't really find a solution to my problem, and after all, it looks like I've got the NTLDR file.
It seems to med that my computer is somehow confused about what it is supposed to boot (the settings are as they should be in the BIOS, I've checked this time and again), like it is trying to boot from one of the SATA drives most probably. But that's only speculation from my side.
Does anyone have a clue about what's going on and how I can get it to work properly?
And if I should copy the NTLDR file (and the belonging files I've seen in some of the solutions) from another computer to mine, is there any chance whatsoever that this might make my computer unable to boot and all that I have on my computer will be "lost" (I know I should always keep a backup, but that's the kind of plan with the two new drives).
I appreciate any help, thanks.

 

Boot to CD and to the recovery console. Then run Fixboot. That should allow you to get things back to normal.

 

Thanx, I'll look into that.
Just one small question, not because I doubt your knowledge, but because I can't afford to lose any of the files that I already have on the same drive as XP; is there a chance this will make me lose any of the files or make me have to install XP again?
Do you reccomend me to do a backup before I do this or is this concidered "a walk in the park? "

 

always backup before u do anything disk level but ... fixboot won't do any real damage unless something is done broke or setup wrong really.

 

Ok, I'll try it...and let you know how it went

 

Well, I went into the recovery console and it gives me
"E:\windows "
It sounds to me like som part of the computer is confused about where my OS i located, because it is on C: and not E:
E: is one of the second hard drives, along with F:

Should I just proceed with fixboot and write "fixboot C:" or shall I play along and write "fixboot E: "?
Or is it possible that the problem lies elsewhere?

 

If you left a floppy in the A drive when you boot up you will get the message "NTLDR is missing "...Just a thought.

 

Thanx, but the A drive is empty, as I (think I) said, windows has no problems starting when the SATA drives are disabled in BIOS.
Edit: A guy I spoke with mentioned MaxBlast, so I tried it, formated the drives again with it...and voila... problem solved
Thanx for all the help, although the solution wasn't really here.

 

not that it makes much diff if all is ok but ... does u'r bios directly support the drive? if so, using maxblast's bios overlay can be problematic ... well suffice it to say that if the bios supports the drive, u don't need maxblast.