NTLDR missing - Windows loads up though *solved*
Weirdest thing happened last week. I was playing some BF1942 on my Athlon 2500+ (OCed to 2.2 ghz @ 1.8V), and the game kept crashing and here I was staring at my desktop instead of some German dude's head through my sniper's lens. Since weather was kinda hot that day, and I don't have the best HSF around (SilentBoost), I took a look at my temps... 56Celcius, somewhat higher than usual (it's usually 51-52 under load) but still not *bad*. So I rebooted in order to use normal clock settings to get lower temps, just in case.
Restored the stock settings, (FSB, voltage, etc), all went fine. Saved the BIOS, and when it rebooted, NOTHING. No post, no beep, nada. Black screen and HD / power LEDs lit up steadily. Reset switch yielded the same result.
I turned the machine off by holding the pwr switch. Waited 5-10 seconds. Cranked it up. It kept crapping I then reseted the BIOS by removing the battery for a while. Tried to boot again, and, relief, it booted... Up to a point. I got an "NTLDR missing, press any key to RESTART" error after the DMI pool thingy. Damn computer didn't want to go futher. Tried some boot disks, nothing would do. But suddenly, when, out of despair, I tried "one more time", I pressed "any" key at the NTLDR message, Windows went on booting instead of restarting! I've been booting up this way for 3 days, and computer runs fine, like before, but with an extra "Welcome" msg when booting... :/
I know some of you must say: If it ain't broke, don't fix it... But I'm afraid this trouble could become worse. I of course googled the error code, but nothing really compare to my case:
It's not a NEW Windows XP installation/upgrade (been running a clean install of Win 2000 since February)
It's not an IDE cable problem (main drive is a S-ATA WD 120gb, got a IDE 60gb for storage though but no OS on this one)
So... to format or not to format?
Weirdest thing happened last week. I was playing some BF1942 on my Athlon 2500+ (OCed to 2.2 ghz @ 1.8V), and the game kept crashing and here I was staring at my desktop instead of some German dude's head through my sniper's lens. Since weather was kinda hot that day, and I don't have the best HSF around (SilentBoost), I took a look at my temps... 56Celcius, somewhat higher than usual (it's usually 51-52 under load) but still not *bad*. So I rebooted in order to use normal clock settings to get lower temps, just in case.
Restored the stock settings, (FSB, voltage, etc), all went fine. Saved the BIOS, and when it rebooted, NOTHING. No post, no beep, nada. Black screen and HD / power LEDs lit up steadily. Reset switch yielded the same result.
I turned the machine off by holding the pwr switch. Waited 5-10 seconds. Cranked it up. It kept crapping I then reseted the BIOS by removing the battery for a while. Tried to boot again, and, relief, it booted... Up to a point. I got an "NTLDR missing, press any key to RESTART" error after the DMI pool thingy. Damn computer didn't want to go futher. Tried some boot disks, nothing would do. But suddenly, when, out of despair, I tried "one more time", I pressed "any" key at the NTLDR message, Windows went on booting instead of restarting! I've been booting up this way for 3 days, and computer runs fine, like before, but with an extra "Welcome" msg when booting... :/
I know some of you must say: If it ain't broke, don't fix it... But I'm afraid this trouble could become worse. I of course googled the error code, but nothing really compare to my case:
It's not a NEW Windows XP installation/upgrade (been running a clean install of Win 2000 since February)
It's not an IDE cable problem (main drive is a S-ATA WD 120gb, got a IDE 60gb for storage though but no OS on this one)
So... to format or not to format?