Get the "NTLDR is missing" error

When I try to boot up my computer, I get the "NTLDR is missing" error.

The same problem happened back in May. Then I ended up having to re-install Windows XP. I suspect I'll have to do the same this time. But I am hoping, against all odds, that someone knows how to rescue my current installation.

All the files on the hard disk seem to be intact. I backed everything up. But all the Windows XP Recovery Console sees is a hard disk without an operating system. The partition is there, since Partition Magic sees it. But it does not have an MBR, and will not boot.

Any suggestions? Any ideas why this problem has happened twice now? This hard disk is a recent replacement (in April) from the previous hard drive, which somehow was completely wiped. Perhaps something in the computer is killing my hard disks?

Thanks.

 

Thanks. I tried both your suggestions, with no luck. The Windows Reovery Console does not see the operating system, so it does not give me the choice "1 ". And I tried the fix from the website you sent me to. No joy there either.

Guess I'm out of luck, huh?

 

The last time this happened with a machine I was working on, and I had difficulties extracting the files, I pulled the hard drive and mounted it in another pc, and copied ntldr and ntdetect from that machine's C drive to the problem drive (where ntdetect existed but not ntldr).

After replacing the drive in its own environment it booted straight off.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, masonite. I've got my faulty hard drive attached to another computer. How do I copy ntldr and ntdetect from one hard drive to the other? Do I need to do it in a DOS window?

 

Now that's interesting.

I did as suggested and copied ntldr and ntdetect from a good hard drive to the bad. But it turned out that ntldr was not missing. As near as I could tell, both ntldr and ntdetect were both present and correct. Nonetheless, I replaced them both. But that did not help.

So I decided to follow Pete's earlier suggestion and try chkdsk /r. That cranked away for nearly an hour. When it finished up, it said that it had fixed some disk problems.

Then I tried rebooting. This time there was no "NTLDR is missing" error message. Instead, it went a bit further, and gave me a new error message: "WINDOWS could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt. <WINDOWS root>\system32\hal.dll. "

That seems to be progress. Because now when I go to the Recovery Console on the Windows CD, it finds the Windows installation on the hard disk.

I found a few suggestions in other threads on what to do with this error message. Apparently, the problem usually is not solved by replacing hal.dll. (Although I will try that when I get a chance.)

Any suggestions what to do next?

 

Now that's even more interesting.

I went to a website recommended in another thread (http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm) and followed the instructions there to replace hal.dll. Then I restarted my computer, and . . . nothing.

No error message. No nothing. It gets past the first screen, and then goes blank. Five minutes later, and still nothing. I can tell that the hard disk is not being accessed. Don't know what else might be going on.

That does not look good. But I'll keep trying.

 

One further note. I tried booting up in safe mode with command prompts. The computer just gets to the first line and hangs. That first line reads:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe

(there may be a space between system and 32 on this post, but there shouldn't be)

 

To continue this sorry saga, I found a Microsoft support website that told how to deal with the ntoskrnl.exe problem. So here is where I am at now:

Windows could not start because of an error in the software.
Please report this problem as :
load needed DLLs for kernel.
Please contact your support person to report this problem.

From threads on this page and elsewhere on the Internet, it seems like this means nothing short of a repair install. Guess I'll try that next, unless anyone has any last-minute suggestions.

Thanks for the help so far.

 

Actually, I think I'll probably just buy a new drive, install XP on that, and use this drive as a second drive. Then at least it will be easier to keep a backup.

 

Good point.

It's a Western Digital drive, and I have a disk that has Data Lifeguard Tools on it. That is supposed to have diagnostics, but I can't seem to find them. Am I missing something obvious? Or am I looking in the wrong place?

 

Thanks for the pointer to the disk diagnostics. I ran them. The hard disk is fine.

I decided to do a repair install of Windows XP to see if that worked. It did not. First I got an error message saying that it could not find the file "asms" on the Windows XP Home CD-ROM. Then I tried again, and got an error message that says:

Setup cannot set the required Windows XP configuration information. This indicates an internal setup error. Contact your system administrator.

Any ideas?

 

Thanks, Pete. I saw that article. But I can't get into Windows at all, so I can't do what it suggests.

Looks like I'm stuck with doing a clean install on this hard disk, or buying a new one and using this one for backup. I'll check out the hard disk prices at Fry's and decide.