ntldr missing

Hey all, I have a quandry, I spent a good portion of last night trying to fix it, to no avail. I just installed Vista as the primary OS on this PC, formatting XP. and upon boot, if I do not have the installation DVD in the drive, i get the above error, "NTLDR is Missing" Now I know that Vista uses a new boot manager, making NTLDR a piece of the past, but surely theres some work around on it? The DVD is a minor inconveniance, but its an inconveiance Id rather not have. I ran into a thread here that had a way of restoring NTLDR, but it sounded like that was removing vista alltogether, this Id like to avoid, in the past few hours ive become quite a fan of it.
Thanks for any help -IL

Hi I have the same problem. Will follow thread to see if there is a fix. Mikee "Immortal Lobster" <Immortal Lobster@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

Hey all, I have a quandry, I spent a good portion of last night trying to fix it, to no avail. I just installed Vista as the primary OS on this PC, formatting XP. and upon boot, if I do not have the installation DVD in the drive, i get the above error, "NTLDR is Missing" Now I know that Vista uses a new boot manager, making NTLDR a piece of the past, but surely theres some work around on it? The DVD is a minor inconveniance, but its an inconveiance Id rather not have. I ran into a thread here that had a way of restoring NTLDR, but it sounded like that was removing vista alltogether, this Id like to avoid, in the past few hours ive become quite a fan of it.
Thanks for any help -IL

You may have a COMPRESSED or CORRUPT NTLDR. If you checked the box on the drive dialog "compress drive to save disk space" you may need to decompress NTLDR. You can only do this from the XP CD Recovery command line. Change dir to the root of your boot volume, then:
attrib -C NTLDR
If no NTLDR is found, then you will need to copy it from your installation CD. You may need to modify the attributes (SHR) and then decrompress the copied NTLDR.
"Mikee" wrote:

Hi I have the same problem. Will follow thread to see if there is a fix. Mikee "Immortal Lobster" <Immortal Lobster@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message Hey all, I have a quandry, I spent a good portion of last night trying to fix it, to no avail. I just installed Vista as the primary OS on this PC, formatting XP. and upon boot, if I do not have the installation DVD in the drive, i get the above error, "NTLDR is Missing" Now I know that Vista uses a new boot manager, making NTLDR a piece of the past, but surely theres some work around on it? The DVD is a minor inconveniance, but its an inconveiance Id rather not have. I ran into a thread here that had a way of restoring NTLDR, but it sounded like that was removing vista alltogether, this Id like to avoid, in the past few hours ive become quite a fan of it.
Thanks for any help -IL

The drive is not formatted, so ill assume its corrupt. in that event resetting the ntldr should fix it then? even though XP is no longer installed? when resetting it, where should I extract it to, directly to the boot record? or anywhere to my drive?

"JMiller" wrote:

You may have a COMPRESSED or CORRUPT NTLDR. If you checked the box on the drive dialog "compress drive to save disk space" you may need to decompress NTLDR. You can only do this from the XP CD Recovery command line. Change dir to the root of your boot volume, then:
attrib -C NTLDR
If no NTLDR is found, then you will need to copy it from your installation CD. You may need to modify the attributes (SHR) and then decrompress the copied NTLDR.
"Mikee" wrote:
Hi I have the same problem. Will follow thread to see if there is a fix. Mikee "Immortal Lobster" <Immortal Lobster@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message Hey all, I have a quandry, I spent a good portion of last night trying to fix it, to no avail. I just installed Vista as the primary OS on this PC, formatting XP. and upon boot, if I do not have the installation DVD in the drive, i get the above error, "NTLDR is Missing" Now I know that Vista uses a new boot manager, making NTLDR a piece of the past, but surely theres some work around on it? The DVD is a minor inconveniance, but its an inconveiance Id rather not have. I ran into a thread here that had a way of restoring NTLDR, but it sounded like that was removing vista alltogether, this Id like to avoid, in the past few hours ive become quite a fan of it.
Thanks for any help -IL

Sorry for the double post, I solved it, but I think it brings up another problem I need resolved. the bootloader is actually now on my primary PATA IDE0 as the boot disk. I resolved this by setting that drive as the primary in the boot order, yet the OS system files are on the SATA drive. is there anyway to move those boot files over to my sata? using the BCDMGR or something, or what settings would I put in those? Im new to vista, but ill tend to pick up rather quickly. I can live with the current configuration, but Id rather not depend on it.
any help fixing my new problem would be again, appreciated.
Mikee, if you have a PATA hdd, try setting it as the primary boot disk, if that resolves the same issue, then Id feel issue this needs some attention

How did you resolve the error?
I also have a SATA with Vista installed, but my PATA has the "boot" directory that Vista put on there. First, I would like to resolve the "NTLDR is missing" error so that I can boot into Vista w/o the DVD, and then, I would like to move the "boot" files over to the SATA so that there are no boot/system files whatsoever on the PATA. Right now my BIOS is set to boot from SATA, then PATA.
"Immortal Lobster" wrote:

Sorry for the double post, I solved it, but I think it brings up another problem I need resolved. the bootloader is actually now on my primary PATA IDE0 as the boot disk. I resolved this by setting that drive as the primary in the boot order, yet the OS system files are on the SATA drive. is there anyway to move those boot files over to my sata? using the BCDMGR or something, or what settings would I put in those? Im new to vista, but ill tend to pick up rather quickly. I can live with the current configuration, but Id rather not depend on it.
any help fixing my new problem would be again, appreciated.
Mikee, if you have a PATA hdd, try setting it as the primary boot disk, if that resolves the same issue, then Id feel issue this needs some attention

Hey all, I have a quandry, I spent a good portion of last night trying to fix it, to no avail. I just installed Vista as the primary OS on this PC, formatting XP. and upon boot, if I do not have the installation DVD in the drive, i get the above error, "NTLDR is Missing" Now I know that Vista uses a new boot manager, making NTLDR a piece of the past, but surely theres some work around on it? The DVD is a minor inconveniance, but its an inconveiance Id rather not have. I ran into a thread here that had a way of restoring NTLDR, but it sounded like that was removing vista alltogether, this Id like to avoid, in the past few hours ive become quite a fan of it.
Thanks for any help -IL

I ahve a 80 gb hdd with 2 partitions. First is master and Win xp SP2 installed. I had clean installed the Vista Beta 2 to the second partition by formatting partition as NTFS. I can boot from Vista normally. But when i choose the Earlier Windows from the boot menu i get the error of NTLDR IS MISSING.... I'm correcting the boot by using fixboot from the XP installation cd it corrects the xo but then i can't get the boot menu for choosing vista or xp. When i boot from vista installation dvd and use repairing, i can boot from xp but then the missing ntldr is assuming again. I copied both ntldr and ntdetect.com from xp installation cd to c: drive but it didn't solve too.
Is there anyone has any solution. By th way i can not use the vistabootpro cause it gaves lot's of errors.

One reason for missing "NTLDR" - correct location of XP not indicated in boot.ini.
"Alper OZGUR" wrote in message

I ahve a 80 gb hdd with 2 partitions. First is master and Win xp SP2 installed. I had clean installed the Vista Beta 2 to the second partition by formatting partition as NTFS. I can boot from Vista normally. But when i choose the Earlier Windows from the boot menu i get the error of NTLDR IS MISSING.... I'm correcting the boot by using fixboot from the XP installation cd it corrects the xo but then i can't get the boot menu for choosing vista or xp. When i boot from vista installation dvd and use repairing, i can boot from xp but then the missing ntldr is assuming again. I copied both ntldr and ntdetect.com from xp installation cd to c: drive but it didn't solve too.
Is there anyone has any solution. By th way i can not use the vistabootpro cause it gaves lot's of errors.

I don't have a solution, but advice: The Vista DVD has a BOOT dir.. There is bootsect.exe. It can be used to restore either Vista boot menu or XP boot menu. After installing Vista you should not touch the XP cd unless*** you first use bootsect.exe /nt52 ALL /force (***You cannot boot into Vista anymore after running this! In XP use /nt60 SYS /force and it MIGHT restore access to Vista, but I've never tested)
"Alper OZGUR" wrote in message

I ahve a 80 gb hdd with 2 partitions. First is master and Win xp SP2 installed. I had clean installed the Vista Beta 2 to the second partition by formatting partition as NTFS. I can boot from Vista normally. But when i choose the Earlier Windows from the boot menu i get the error of NTLDR IS MISSING.... I'm correcting the boot by using fixboot from the XP installation cd it corrects the xo but then i can't get the boot menu for choosing vista or xp. When i boot from vista installation dvd and use repairing, i can boot from xp but then the missing ntldr is assuming again. I copied both ntldr and ntdetect.com from xp installation cd to c: drive but it didn't solve too.
Is there anyone has any solution. By th way i can not use the vistabootpro cause it gaves lot's of errors.

Hi! I was trying to make room on my computer and defragmented my D drive. When I rebooted, it says NTLDR is missing. Now I have a XP recovery cd and used the repair. It allowed me to access the D drive but I am stuck on which command to perform to get it to work. Any suggestions?

Hæ,
Well i'm not very sure, but in windows 2000 you can copy (if you have an original file on another computer) this ntldr from diskette to the i386 (on C: or D: or wherever) and then start again.
Z
"Roger" wrote:

Hi! I was trying to make room on my computer and defragmented my D drive. When I rebooted, it says NTLDR is missing. Now I have a XP recovery cd and used the repair. It allowed me to access the D drive but I am stuck on which command to perform to get it to work. Any suggestions?