Ntldr??

[alexsabree]

Ok basically i have a friend who has a new computer and needs a OS on his harddrive now... he gave me a WinXP Homeedition and told me to install it

I put it in and it said that "NTLDR is missing press cntrl+alt+delete to restart"

This harddrive is blank and was in use b4 he formatted it to NTFS

Does anyone know what NTLDR is? Or what i can do to fix this prob?

Thanks in advance,
Alexsabree

 

[jcortes]

NTLDR is a core system file that loads the window GUI.

here are some possible problems
1. Computer is booting from a non-bootable source.
2. Computer hard disk drive is not properly setup in BIOS.
3. Corrupt NTLDR and/or NTDETECT.COM file.
4. Misconfiguration with the boot.ini file.
5. Attempting to upgrade from a Windows 95, 98, or ME computer that is using FAT32.
6. New hard disk drive being added.
7. Corrupt boot sector / master boot record.
8. Seriously corrupted version of Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
9. Loose or Faulty IDE/EIDE hard disk drive cable.


http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

 

[jcortes]

let me know if you need more than that

 

[alexsabree]

i think... i found what i did wrong

I didnt make the cdrom drive the first boot device

I read this somewhere and this just confirms what i read, now its time for the 1 1/2 hour ride to try to get my friends computer to work (+ no he doesnt wanna do it over the phone)

Im still going to read up on it some more.. just in case

Thanks alot, im clueless when it comes to Operating Systems

 

[jcortes]

good luck

 

[alexsabree]

thanks, doin it in the morning

 

[Sui]

Ok basically i have a friend who has a new computer and needs a OS on his harddrive now... he gave me a WinXP Homeedition and told me to install it

I put it in and it said that "NTLDR is missing press cntrl+alt+delete to restart"

This harddrive is blank and was in use b4 he formatted it to NTFS

Does anyone know what NTLDR is? Or what i can do to fix this prob?

Thanks in advance,
Alexsabree

If he formated it then he had a working windows copy somewhere, when you format a drive it puts a pointer in the system partition(the one you can't see) to NTLDR, which is one of the required files to boot NT(2k/XP). The most likely problem was just that you forgot to change the bios to boot from the CD drive. If you remembered to do this then the cd, or cddrive could be damaged.