Vista - OS Problem

Hi everyone,

I am a bit weary of asking this here bearing in mind these are Vista Forums, but I hope I may be excused just this once, as I have looked around the net and cannot find anything of use for my problem which is:

I have two OS's Vista and also XP and its XP that is the problem in so much as I cannot get it to boot, I get the error ntldr is missing, and no matter if I put the disk in and try to boot from the disk, the system still won't play ball, it just tells me to ctrl-alt-del to reboot, this is despite me pressing any key to boot from the disk.

I really do not know what else to do, getting XP to work is not a major issue for me, but it would be nice to see what I have on that drive.

As a point of note, I have both my operating systems in caddies, so I can remove Vista and slide XP in whenever I want to, incase some of you have not heard of caddies, but I expect most will have

Hope a clever stick out there can sort me out at somepoint

Sorry again for asking this on a Vista Forum

Jekyll and Hyde

Hi - good to hear from you again,


Is this any use ?

http://www.tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm

How to troubleshoot the "NTLDR Is Missing" error message in Windows 2000

http://computer-vet.com/weblog/2004/...s-missing.html

Hope it helps

SIW2

Hi and good to hear from you also

I remember that first website, as I found that a long time ago, but to be honest I find alot of that going over my head, might be easy for most but I am nervous of trying anything that means going into the Bios, although I did do awhile back and asides from trying to set the CD to boot first, I left everything else alone, but that little thing I did did not help, the other sites are useful yes and thank you for giving me the links, but as I say alot of it goes way over my abilities to follow

Tomorrow I may try again and see but I am extremely worried that if I get it working through whatever method, that then the Vista HD will come at me with the same error or different, just can't understand what the hell went wrong, it was fine a few months back

Thank you for your help though, appreciated

Jekyll and Hyde

I used to get problems like that with XP all the time, randomly. Like one time I went on holiday for a week, shut down my PC properly the night before. Came back a week later and I had that error :S

Is it a seperate computer you have it on? Or a dual boot?

Its a separate drive that he has it on I think.

Yes mansrm81 is correct, as I said in my first post, I have two caddies, which contain a HD (one for Vista) (one for XP)


Jekyll and Hyde

Hi Chris,

Try the Recovery Console. For more information, see the following link: How to install and use the Recovery Console in Windows XP Note that this is quite detailed in places, so you might like to print the information out so that you can refer to it as you go along. Good luck, and I hope that this helps.

Hello Dwarf,

Thank you for that, only problem is that I do not have a Printer I used to but my old PC did'nt seem to like it, and I had constant problems, and since then I have not been able to get a new one, and now its totally out as I do not have the room for one, no matter how small lol

So I have to kind of either write things down or try to do it from memory and the latter is reallly to big of a risk to try, as I am sure everyone would agree lol

I'll take a read through it though, so many thanks

Chris

For booting issues specific to ntldr.dll, this method seems to fix it.

This step-by-step article describes how to create a bootable floppy disk for Windows XP to access a drive with a faulty boot sequence on an Intel-processor-based computer.

The Windows XP installation CD-ROM is a bootable disk and can be used to start Windows. When you use the Windows XP installation CD-ROM to start your computer, you can use the Windows Recovery Console to help recover the system software. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
314058 (Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console for advanced users ) Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console
Note The procedure for RISC-based computers is different and not documented in this article.


Back to the top
Requirements

• A blank floppy disk
• The Windows XP CD-ROM or an operational Windows XP-based computer

Back to the top
Create a boot floppy disk by using a Windows XP-based computer

1. Format a floppy disk by using the Windows XP format utility. To do this follow these steps:
   1. <LI type=a>Insert the floppy disk that you want to use into the floppy disk drive.
   2. Click Start, click Run, type format a:, and then click OK.
2. Copy the Ntldr and the Ntdetect.com files from the I386 folder on the Windows XP installation CD-ROM, from the Windows XP installation floppy disk, or from a computer that is running the same version of Windows XP as the computer that you want to access by using the boot floppy disk. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. <LI type=a>Insert the Windows XP installation media into the disk drive of the computer. <LI type=a>Click Start, click Run, type <DriveLetter>:\I386, and then click OK.
      
      Note<DriveLetter> represents the root location of the installation media. <LI type=a>Right-click the Ntldr file, and then click Copy. <LI type=a>Click Start, click Run, type a:, and then click OK. <LI type=a>Click the Edit menu, and then click Paste.
   2. Repeat steps 2b through 2e for the Ntdetect.com file.
3. Create a Boot.ini file, or copy one from a computer that is running Windows XP, and then modify the Boot.ini file to match the computer that you are trying to access. The following example lists how to create a Boot.ini file for a single-partition Integrated Device Electronics drive that has Windows XP installed in the \Windows folder:
   1. <LI type=a>Click Start, click Run, type notepad, and then click OK. <LI type=a>Type the following text: [boot loader]timeout=30Default= multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows[operating systems]multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows="<OperatingSystem>"
      
      Note The value that is represented by the <OperatingSystem> placeholder depends on the configuration of the Windows XP computer that you are trying to access. For example, if you are trying to start a Windows XP Professional computer, this value is as follows: Microsoft Windows XP Professional
      <LI type=a>Click the File menu, and then click Save As.
   2. Select 3 ½ Floppy (A from the Save in drop-down list, type Boot.ini in the File name text box, and then click Save.
   Note If your computer starts from a SCSI hard disk drive, you may have to replace the multi(0) entry with scsi(0). If you are using scsi(x) in the Boot.ini file, copy the correct device driver for the SCSI controller that is used on the computer to the root of the boot disk, and then rename the device driver to Ntbootdd.sys. Change the disk(0) number to represent the SCSI-ID of the hard disk drive you want to start. If you are using multi(x) in the Boot.ini file, you do not have to change the code in the Boot.ini file.
4. Insert the floppy disk into the floppy disk drive of your computer, and then restart Windows XP.

Back to the top
Create a boot floppy disk without a Windows XP-based computer

1. To download and to create the Windows XP Setup boot disks from a computer that is running Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition (SE), or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), refer to Microsoft Knowledge Base article 310994. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 310994 (How to obtain Windows XP Setup disks for a floppy boot installation ) How to obtain Windows XP Setup boot disks
2. Delete all the files from the newly created Setup disk 1.
3. Copy the Ntldr and the Ntdetect.com files from the I386 folder on the Windows XP installation CD-ROM, on the Windows XP installation floppy disk, or from a computer that is running the same version of Windows XP as the computer that you want to access by using the boot floppy disk. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. <LI type=a>Insert the Windows XP installation media into the disk drive of the computer. <LI type=a>Click Start, click Run, type <DriveLetter>:\I386, and then click OK.
      
      Note<DriveLetter> represents the root location of the installation media. <LI type=a>Right-click the Ntldr file, and then click Copy. <LI type=a>Click Start, click Run, type a:, and then click OK. <LI type=a>Click the Edit menu, and then click Paste.
   2. Repeat steps 2b through 2e for the Ntdetect.com file.
4. Rename the Ntldr file to Setupldr.bin. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. <LI type=a>Right-click the Ntldr file, and then click Rename.
   2. Type Setupldr.bin, and then press ENTER.
5. Create a Boot.ini file or copy one from a computer that is running Windows XP, and then modify the Boot.ini file to match the computer that you are trying to access. The following example lists how to create a Boot.ini file for a single-partition Integrated Device Electronics drive with Windows XP installed in the \Windows folder:
   1. <LI type=a>Click Start, click Run, type notepad, and then click OK. <LI type=a>Type the following text : [boot loader]timeout=30Default= multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows[operating systems]multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows="<OperatingSystem>"
      
      Note The value represented by the <OperatingSystem> placeholder depends on the configuration of the Windows XP computer that you are trying to access. For example, if you are try to start a Windows XP Professional computer, this value is as follows: Microsoft Windows XP Professional
      <LI type=a>Click the File menu, and then click Save As.
   2. Select 3 ½ Floppy (A from the Save in drop-down list, type Boot.ini in the File name text box, and then click Save.
   Note If your computer starts from a SCSI hard disk drive, you may have to replace the multi(0) entry with scsi(0). If you are using scsi(x) in the Boot.ini file, copy the correct device driver for the SCSI controller that is used on the computer to the root of the boot disk, and then rename the device driver to Ntbootdd.sys. Change the disk(0) number to represent the SCSI-ID of the hard disk drive you want to start. If you are using multi(x) in the Boot.ini file, you do not have to change the code in the Boot.ini file.
6. Insert the floppy disk into the floppy disk drive of your computer, and then restart Windows XP.

Sorry to have to tell you this after you did that long post but I don't have a floppy drive not making this easy am I?