NTLDR

[cerberus6]

Hello all. I'm at a total loss as to what the heck is wrong with my boot sector. I've got these two older 20GB WD hard drives that were previously installed in another machine running win2k Pro (Fat32). I'm trying to install one of them into another box that I'm putting together for a friend of mine. Installing Win2k using the four boot disks or booting straight from the CD produces this error after the drive is formatted to NTFS (or even FAT32!), Win2k files are copied to the HD, and it needs to restart. Ok, so the box restarts, then this:

NTLDR missing...press ctrl-alt-del to restart

I've tried repairing the initial Win2k install using an emergency repair boot disk. I've heard about this having to do with a corrupted boot sector? And it can be repaired using a Win95 or 98 boot disk? I'm confused...how would a Win98 boot disk be used to correct an NTFS problem? Somebody please help!

[cerberus6]

Tried "fixboot" in the Win2k repair console, and it wrote a new boot sector. But I've still got that ******* of an error. Anyone?

[BipolarBill]

Actually, it's FIXMBR for rewriting the bootsector. FIXBOOT just repairs NTLDR.

Is there an active partiton present?

As much as I hate to say it, make sure that you remove the CD and any floppy.

[cerberus6]

Hi Bill. Just tried fixmbr, and successfully written a new boot sector, and exited (made sure no discs were in the drive upon reboot). Unfortunately, the prob is still there. Yeah, according to the repair console, I have one partition present.

[BipolarBill]

I would Zap the drive and start fresh, Cerberus.

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Let Setup create and format a partition afterward.

[Sterling_Aug]

Do you have any ISA cards or SCSI cards installed in the system during the install? Take them out and install again. I just had this happen to me at work last week.

[cerberus6]

Well, just zapped it. It only took a second. Is that normal? I'm in the middle of a fresh Win2k install (NTFS & formatting now)...and my fingers are crossed. I'll post the results in a few moments. Thanks again for your attention, Bill.



Oh, and yes Sterling, I do have an ISA card in the box (a Diamond 56K modem). If this round still produces the problem, I'll remove it.

[BipolarBill]

Oh yeah...good one Sterling.

If you have a RAID or IDE controller card, check your boot sequence. Don't forget to load the drivers for any add-in controllers by pressing F6 early in text-mode Setup.

[cerberus6]

Success!!

Zap did the trick.

[BipolarBill]

Originally posted by cerberus6
Well, just zapped it. It only took a second. Is that normal?

Oh yeah. I can't believe that people sit through a full low-level format when they can zap the first 128 sectors (wiping the MBR and partition table) in 1 second! It's an awesome tool and removes drive overlays (EZ Drive, Drive Manager) too.

[cerberus6]

Indeed. What an awesome tool to have around. She's up and running, thanks to your expertise BB.

[herosrest]

Is the MBR swith different in Win 9x.

[BipolarBill]

In Win9x, it's FDISK /MBR for MBR repair and SYS C: for bootloader repair.

[herosrest]

Cheers.
Don't run out of ammo now.