ntldr missing problem(i already searched)

[scrotch21]

i tried to configure my desktop to be a dual boot with fedora and winxp today; i have done this before on both my laptop and a friend's desktop so im pretty sure i didnt do anything out of the ordinary in prepping the machine.

the problem came after i had created a new partition and i tried to install fedora on said partition, when setup asked to insert disk 2, it told me that the drive could not be mounted. so i said screw it and decided that i would live with only having my laptop dual booting.

when i restarted i got a ntldr is missing error so i decided that since it is relatively new pc to me and nothing that i would care about loosing on the drive, i would just reinstall windows as oppossed to trying to figure out what to do with the missing nt loader.

after i had formatted the drive for a clean install, the machine rebooted and will not continue to the rest of the windows setup for the ntldr missing error - it pops up right after checking the cdrom drives.

to make matters worse, when i had reviewed some forum postings about the ntldr problems and tried some of the solutions, i discovered that the computer is no longer recognizing the c: drive from a dos prompt.

has anyone ever heard of a problem similar to this or can provide and advice/help?

 

[ShoobieRat]

Scrotch, give this link a try:

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

It has some rather thorough info on your problem.

I agree with MicroBell, first. Try booting from the Xp CD. Second, try checking the BIOS like the above link suggests.

 

[scrotch21]

yes, im afraid i have tried both the fixboot and fixmbr and have tried just straight copying the ntldr and ntdetect.com files from the cd.
the settings in the BIOS are correct as well i believe.
no luck though

any other ideas?

 

[scrotch21]

well, some good news...
i tried to reinstall linux out of desperation and what do ya know? it worked this time so im typing from red hat 9 (instead of fedora)

i guess now ill try to run the windows install again, though it is nice to have a GUI for a little while

 

[Layman]

the ntldr is missing error.. if it does not fix after running fixmbr or fixboot... and you have also tried to copy ntldr and ntdetect.com from the i386... you could try this:

boot from the recovery console (assuming that recovery console is loaded as drive d):
d:\i386>expand compact.ex_ d:\compact.exe
d:\i386>cd \
d:\>copy compact.exe c:\
d:\>c:
c:\>compact ntldr /u

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
is you try and expand the compact.exe straight away to c root it may not work...