Boot problem: frequent "can't find NTLDR" message

It started about two months ago, but I can't relate it to a specific event. I have been getting the old "can't find NTLDR" message (of course it is really there). At first it was just once in awhile, but it has gotten more frequent, until it is now about every other time I boot. Usually, but not always, re- boots properly after doing CTRL ALT DEL. Boots fine from a floppy with NTLDR and the other two files.

Please read this before you reply!

Things I have tried:

Scandisk;

Complete up to date virus scan;

fixboot (a new boot sector);

fixmbr, but I aborted when I got the warning that I have a non-standard or invalid boot record and creating a new one may make this partition unreadable.

The map utility shows my boot drive as C when run from the XP CD, while the recovery console shows the boot drive as F. This disaprity was apparently a result of partioning the brand new drive on which I installed the XP update with a third party utility before installation. At any rate, having F as my boot drive hasn't seemed to cause me any problems, except it may now be why I get the fixmbr warning. Not sure.

Anyway, does anyone have a suggestion that doesn't include anything I have tried, short of a complete reinstallation (ugh).

Should I bite the bullet and run fixmbr anyway? If so, from the CD, or the recovery console?

Thanks for any help.

 

Hello Bob,

I did a search on NTLDR and this thread's problem is fairly close to yours http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=27186&highlight=NTLDR

The file should be on the XP disc.

There are a lot of hits w/the seach - so if you want to continie the search, look for NTLDR.

Regards - Charles

 

Interesting since Scandisk hasn't been part of any OS after WinME and even assuming a copy from another OS could be made to run from a boot floppy (I have no idea) I'd expect it to seriously damage the system.

Have you tried going to start~run and

Code:

sfc /scannow

I'd hold off on letting fixmbr run in the face of that warning. It may become necessary to try it at some point but not yet.

 

Hmm. *puts on sleuthing hat*

NTLDR is the OS bootstrap file. The hardware will POST, then read the MBR, which reads the partition table which points to the boot record. The boot record points to NTLDR.

Part of the mystery of your problem is that it doesn't always fail. Since the OS is not running yet, one has to wonder what the possible vectors of change are. The answer is: very very little.

A hint is given in your notes regarding the F drive and a recient repartition, but since no actual code is run, any problems in this area would be constant.

I would like to know if this happens when the machine is cold, having been off. Does it ever happen on a reboot after you've been using the computer a while? My theory at this point is that your hard drive is nearing death, and it takes a few minutes to 'warm up' enough to function properly. Does the phenomenon manifest in a way to support that?

 

I assumed charlibob mean chkdisk - maybe I shouldn't make those assumptions.

Regards - Charles

 

Newt

I meant to say chkdsk. Old os terms die hard. Ran it with the /r switch. Took forever on the 120G drive. Found and corrected some problems, but not the boot situation.

 

Joe

It wasn't a recent repartition. What happened was I installed the XP update on a brand new drive which I had partioned with the manufaturer's utility. Had I let XP take care of that, I would have ended up with the drive being "C ". Note that in this copy of my boot.ini file the drive is listed as "C ", even though Windows lists it as "F ":

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT= "Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

You are scaring me. This drive is less than four months old, and it does happen more often cold, although it also happens warm too. Some times boots fine cold.

One thing I notice, is that the "detecting IDE drives" message takes a long, long time to clear when I get the error. Also when this happens, it fails to detect the primary slave drive altogether, but the other two drives, boot and secondary master, are eventually listed. I have checked the list of detected drives and it lists the actual correct drives.

 

Thanks to all for your help

Did a boot test after the drive was warm for a couple of hours and got five out of five clean boots. When cold, it would have given me the NTLDR error at least several times. Thanks to Joe Hobart for his analysis. I will be replacing the drive before it fails, and hoping that I can make an exact copy so I don't have to reload everything. I have copied important stuff to one of my other drives already.

 

Well, while not exactly good news at least it is news and you can prepare for drive replacement.

As to scandisk vs. chkdsk, I am relieved to find it was just a naming problem but now you've gotten me curious. I wonder what WOULD happen if someone was running an NT OS with FAT and tried to use a version of scandisk to check and repair.

I think I would not recommend it on a system that ever needed to operate again since it might be able to do stuff.

 

FWIW, I've experimented with this a bit in the past on a dual boot win98 & XP and never ran int any problems. I never did try to run scandisk from within XP though (wonder if it would even run). Always from 98 or from DOS. I'd run it and then boot to XP and run chkdsk and always got a clean bill of health from it. This was on a fat 32 formatted disk. The puters still running strong so I don't think it could have done too much damage.

 

Thanks Zander. That is interesting and somewhat surprising. Hmmmm.

Have you ever noticed chkdsk finding problems scandisk missed?

 

No. Chkdsk always reported no errors. It could be there's some type of error that it would find that scandisk won't but if so, I never ran into it. Most of the errors though were the usual free space being reported incorrectly and I remember a couple of times it (scandisk) found a cross linked file or two. With both errors chkdsk reported things being OK after running scandisk. I guess that's about all I can tell you about it.

 

In that case, I'd have to guess that chkdsk was designed to handle both FAT & NTFS so they saw no need to retain scandisk even though it still did/does fine for FAT.

Thanks for the info. May come in handy some day for a 2K/XP user with one of those OEM 'restore' CDs who can't run chkdsk from the GUI. 98 boot floppy with scandisk and they would be good to go.

 

Your welcome. Now, here's another one for you. What about the version of chkdsk that comes with 98? I just thought about that and was wondering how it differs from the one that came with NT. Just something more to ponder.

 

Scandisk isn't included in the XP command set, so you'll normally get a message something like "Command not found ".

Just out of curiosity, I copied it from my 98SE computer to my XP System32 folder and tried to run it. I was able to get the parameters by running scandisk /? but, when I tried to run it to check an empty hard drive, I got the following:

 

Addendum

The "can't find NTDLR" problem appears to have vanished; warm boot or cold boot. So what happened? Here is what I think:

Sometime before running my warm boot test I had decided to run sfc /scannow as Newt had suggested earlier. I popped in my XP CD as requested and when I saw how slowly the progress bar was moving, I went off to do some chores. When I eventually came back, there was the desktop staring at me with no messages. Having never run the file checker manually before, I didn't know what to expect and wondered if it had just aborted. Shortly after, I did the warm boot test, posted the results, and assumed that this indicated my drive was showing signs of failure.

In the time since then, I have cold booted my system a number of times with three or four hours of off time between boots, including off overnight. No problems! Guess there must have been a corrupt protected file. Thanks Newt. Wish I had followed your suggestion when you first posted it. I hope that anyone else who has a similar problem will try sfc /scannow as one of the trouble shooting tools. Thing is, as far as I can tell, it isn't suggested in any of the trouble shooting info in the Help and Support section of the Start Menu.

 

Glad to hear it seems to have gone away. I hope that was it! However, I'm stickin to my guns, i'd keep your important files backed up daily.

 

OK Joe, you were right...

Got this message on the event log yesterday:

"The driver has detected that device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1 has predicted that it will fail. Immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp ".

I bought a new drive and used the utility to that came with the drive to copy the boot partition. Problem is it would boot, but was full of errors and a lot of programs needed re-registering to work. So... I tried Partition Magic to make the same copy, and this time the only error I have found, so far, sit that system restore does not work. I get this message:

System Restore Application has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

I tried sfc /scannow. No help. Although I could do manual backups of the registry, I hate to operate with out this utility. Any suggestions short of reinstalling over the top of this system?

 

God bless those engineers that invented SMART (the technology for hard drive self diagnostic).


Try reinstalling system restore by finding SR.INF from %systemroot%\inf. Right click, and choose install. (note this will put the whammie on your existing restore points).

If that doesnt work, collect the dump and post the analysis here.