NTLDR is missing... and I've tried everything I can think of.

[Zantos]

Alright, so my brother has a Dell Inspiron 1420 which has been having a bit of a tough time lately. As the tech savvy one of the house, it falls upon me to fix things that break and usually I do a pretty good job, but this time I'm stuck...

Alright, so upon boot up he gets the message "NTLDR is missing, hit any key to reboot" which, upon doing some research, I found is a fairly common error. I don't know what he did to break it, or wether he just got a virus which broke it for him, but I set out to fix it.

I checked out many solutions from using the "Repair" function on the OS Disk, to the DOS Box solution to delete the portion of the code that maybe causing the problem and rewrite it. I had no luck with this, so I grudgingly made the decision that we should format the hard drive and have away with this whole issue. Reinstalled everything, and she worked good as new! For three days...

Three days later, there is the start up error again. After a complete format and reinstall of the OS, the NT Loader once again missing in action. I have reinstalled the whole thing twice since then; OS, Drivers, Antivirus, everything, and yet it still lasts about a week before keeling over, an expensive paper weight once more.

Any suggestions? I'm pretty desperate, and oh so tempted just to take a crowbar to the thing, but I'm willing to reason with it. Thank you ahead of time!

- Zantos


Edit: Also, we are running Vista, if that will help to remedy the problem. I have kept this in mind when looking for solutions, but I thought I'd mention it.

 

[squallBK]

Hmm...when using the OS Disk, rather than using the 'repair function' try entering command line and typing in the following:

bootrec /fixmbr

I've found that this command often helps fix errors that the Repair function simply cannot. Let us know how it turns out, and if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to ask

edit- While I don't want to jump to conclusions, you should be made aware that continuous failures to load the operating system may be a result of a progressively bad hard drive. How long has your brother owned this computer? And has he ever had to replace a hard drive?

 

[KSoD]

Recovering the Vista Bootloader from the DVD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

 

[King X13]

If it keeps happening it sounds like your hard drive might be bad. The area where your boot info is stored keeps getting corrupted and not readable.