NTDLR is missing

Hello,

A friend had windows XP professional installed, but after running well for some time now, it started rebooting into the 'options' screen, by this I mean the screen where it asks to select either 'safe mode', 'start windows normally', 'last known good configuration' etc. When selecting any of these the PC appeared to be starting in windows xp but then rebooting back to that screen. Therefore, it never actually booted to the desktop.

A colleage suggested running recovery console and using fixmbr. This I did but to no avail. Then he suggested fixboot, which then created the error on bootup which now appears 'NTDLR is missing'. However, when following all avenues, i.e. copying ntdlr and ntdetect from the cd-rom to the c drive, it copies the files but the error still appears on boot up.

Also, running a chkdsk /p /r command doesn't complete as it says the drive is unrecoverable.

When checking the c drive in recovery console only the ntdlr and ntdetect files are showing.

My questions are:-

• Would running fixmbr or fixboot have caused the 'ntdlr is missing' error?
• Would any data have been recoverable if the above commands had not been carried out?
• Our friend had numerous outlook express emails on her hard drive, are these recoverable considering what has happened?

Running tests on the hard drive prior to running recovery console showed that the hard drive had failed. I checked numerous microsoft knowledge bases and Internet forums but the majority repeated what I did above.

Any assistance would be really appreciated,
Jeff

 

To test the hdd , go to the manufacture and use their test utility. If it is reported as good then we can go from there.