Good ole NTLDR

FuNiOnZ

Junior Member
Dec 8, 2003
16
0
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Alright here's the setup :

I came home from work, turned on my monitor, the cursor moved around but wouldn't click on anything, so I rebooted. After post I was greeted with

DISK BOOT FAILURE - INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

I pressed enter and it popped up again. Then I pressed enter again..... and Windows XP loaded :confused:

So that threw me off. But I knew something wasn't right so I ran through google looking around, eventually gave up, tried rebooting, then I got

NTLDR is Missing
CTRL + ALT + DEL TO REBOOT

I've seen that message a few times in my computer career, but never right after a disk boot failure. A few things came to mind to check, heat problems, faulty disk, fragmentation, master boot record, etc

I put a huge box fan on my case, that dropped temps down to around 70F, which is perfectly acceptable. I found out that putting in my XP Boot CD I had made a while back, would cause "Press any key to boot from CD" to popup, and if I didn't press anything, it would actually bypass the NTLDR message and let me choose which partition to boot from, so I tried loading my supposed 'damaged' windows. I defragged both HD's (which only contain one partition each), did a scheduled error check on both drives (for good measure), went to recovery console, did a FIXMBR and a FIXBOOT, reinstalled windows, put windows on an entirely different HD, ran a complete virus scan, and the message still comes up. And it comes up fast, like before the HD even reads really. Soon as the post screen flashes away, boom, NTLDR is missing. I also checked to see if my BIOS had the right boot order, it did. I also checked to make sure that the battery wasn't dead, and it was fine, date still shows on BIOS.

So i'm pretty much stumped, the only thing I haven't ruled out is a memory resident virus, or something of that sort. I would appreciate some more heads on this, I can get into windows, but I don't want to have to leave my boot CD in just to use windows.

-Aaron-
 

TechHead87

Senior member
Sep 18, 2004
738
0
0
EDIT:

First off, give us some system specs. WinXP? 2000? If XP, is it configured to run as the NTFS or FAT32?

Power down. Make sure all drives, along with everything else, is seated properly. Unplug and replug everything. Try different IDE cables if you have to.

I see you did some hardware diagnostics, but the "NTLDR is missing" message keeps coming back...

Check this site out:
http://www.xmission.com/~comphope/issues/ch000465.htm
 

FuNiOnZ

Junior Member
Dec 8, 2003
16
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I've run chkdsk and windows error checker, what else is there to check? I thought the harddrive might be dying also, but theres no evidence of that, all files access normally, theres no slowdown, no weird noises, hell I can play games on it right now. And the NTLDR file isn't missing, i'm looking at it right now on my C:\ drive. That site you linked to is one of the many I have read, I've ruled out the majority of those problems, let me try re-seating everything.
 

FuNiOnZ

Junior Member
Dec 8, 2003
16
0
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And it gets weirder;

I unhooked all the drives, found that the connector running to the mobo was slightly loose, so I hooked only my main drive up, booted up, and it worked perfectly, no NTLDR or anything. But now that my secondary drive is hooked up, i'm getting DISK BOOT FAILURE again, and after pressing enter twice, it goes to windows.

I unhooked it again, main drive works flawlessly now, got the secondary drive hooked up through USB, running a disk check on it.

Check came out good, no problems detected. Oooooooook :|

Edit : Didn't see your question added, It's WinXP, NTFS.

Edit #2 : Formatted the drive after I backed up some items on it, now when it posts, it causes the DISK BOOT message, after hitting enter twice it takes me into my normal XP on my main drive. I'm starting to think this bastard is going out on me, but its finding no bad sectors. Sigh.
 

FuNiOnZ

Junior Member
Dec 8, 2003
16
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Anyone think the cable could be bad only on the slave plug? Cause it makes no sense that the drive works fine through USB but not IDE
 

Slowlearner

Senior member
Mar 20, 2000
873
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I have had strange results with WD hds. Are any of your hds WD? AT valued member Mechbgon had also highlighted the quirky behavior of WD hds.
 

letdown427

Golden Member
Jan 3, 2006
1,594
1
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You have got the jumper pins set the right way? I presume you have, as it was working before, but still...

Not OC'd are you? I've had an excessive OC cause that NTLDR to come up quite a few times...
 

FuNiOnZ

Junior Member
Dec 8, 2003
16
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0
Nope, no OC, and my pins are set okay. The drive in question is actually a Seagate 80GB Barracuda, worked fine up until now
 

FuNiOnZ

Junior Member
Dec 8, 2003
16
0
0
SOLVED :

Slave plug on my IDE cable was actually bad, tested it by swapping out cables with my DVD-ROM and CD-ROM. Drive now boots flawlessly and is in use again :D