NTLDR is missing, Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to restart

[leda]

So that is the message I received this Monday morning!!! I purchased a DELL computer in November, with XP Home installed on it.. Because I could get it cheaper, I installed XP Pro once I had the computer here. Everything has been fine, a few glitches here and there, but this morning I came into the office and got the error message. NTLDR is missing.....
I tried the Recovery Option on my XP Pro CD, but it wouldn't accept my administrator password.. I am the Administrator here, so I do know the password. When I chose the option to reinstall, it said that there wasn't any other version of Windows installed. Anyway... I have reinstalled the OS, (Home, then Pro), but I have no idea what happened.
I called Dell support, and since I upgraded to Pro, they wouldn't help me, and I called Microsoft, and they told me to reinstall, because they had never heard of this happening.. Any thoughts???
Thanks,
Leda

 

[linney]

As far as NTLDR is concerned this is what Microsoft have on it.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q315/2/61.asp

 

[leda]

That definitely sounds accurate, but I still don't know why my computer did that...
Thanks for the help!

 

[ninja440th]

silly question but there wasnt a floppy in the drive by any chance ?

as you normally get that error when you try booting up with a floppy disk in ; }}

happens a lot here dohhhhh

 

[Guest_imported]

I had a similar problem. The culprit was an install of a version 1 Application Accelerator from Intel. Intel now has version 2 available for download that works fine.

 

[bgauntt]

It could also be a geometry problem. Have you tried going into BIOS and setting the hard drive specs as close as you can to what is written on your hard drive label?

 

[bgauntt]

You can also try to reboot to the recovery console and use fixboot command to rewrite the boot code.

 

[jblack]

NTLDR is missing, Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to restart

Everytime I have received that message - there has been a floppy in the drive........

Be of good cheer,
Jeff Black

 

[leda]

Hi there!
No, there was no floppy disk in the drive.. Believe me, I spent over 3 hours trying to figure it out.. (Dell and Microsoft both asked me that same question about 5 times!!!!)
When I was in Recovery Console, it asked me for the name and password of the administrator, (that's me!!), and it wouldn't accept my password.........
I am assuming, (which I know is dangerous), that the settings in the BIOS are as close as they can be from Dell setting this up..
What is the Application Accelerator?
Thanks for all of your help!
Leda

 

[dball63]

I've run into this problem twice now with XP pro. No reason for the problem that I see. PC hung.....re-booted it......no NTLDR!
Twice now in the last month.

Trying copy NTLDR............no good
fdisk........................no good
recovery console FixMBR......no good
recovery console FixBoot.....no good

I'm about to give up on this OS. I don't have time for this weak stuff.

 

[haaba01]

Here try this link for the fix.

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/N/NTLDR.html

 

[dball63]

I don't think that will work. I've already formatted the drive again and installed everything again (FUN). So if it happens again I may need a better solution......re-installing is very time consuming!

The solution you provided assumes the OS was upgrade.......I didn't upgrade over fat32 partition either time. I let XP install format the partition as NTFS each time. I never upgrade desktops anymore......too many problems.

The OS had been working fine for a few weeks and seemed stable. Then the problem would arise, usually after a troublesome software installation. This last time was during "Windows Update".


Also, I'm not positive but I don't think you can sys an NTFS partition??

 

[cordiaturbo]

try ghosting the o/s once you have everything installed

a reinstallation will only take u 10mins then for everything to be reloaded

 

[J741]

Leda wrote...
"I tried the Recovery Option on my XP Pro CD, but it wouldn't accept my administrator password.. I am the Administrator here, so I do know the password."

If your are the network administrator, keep in mind that the network password for the administrator account, and the local machine's administrative password when not attached to the network may be different. So when the PC has not yet initialised the networking functions, the machine's administrator account password may be required.

If by "I am the Administrator here" you mean that your account name has administrator priveledges, your account name password and the administrator account password may not be the same. The "administrator" account is a required account, but when you get your PC pre-loaded with Windows XP, the first Windows XP intro and Q&A session that asks you to list accounts you want on this PC, does not list the administrator account, nor does it let you enter the name "administrator".