NTLDR Missing after adding HDD

[Murpheeee]

I am trying to talk my brother through adding a new HDD, over the phone


He just added a new 250Gb slave HDD to my system.
Booted into Windows, created one big partition, formatted it, rebooted and it hung with NTLDR missing error.

He booted from Windows XP CD to get a look at the partitions, deleted the new one and recreated it, rebooted it again and this time it worked fine.....unitil....he removed the CD from the drive. Now it gives a NTLDR missing error. If he puts the CD back in it boots up into Windows just fine.

Any ideas

 

[Bozo Galora]

sounds like he screwed the partitiion table
possibly sata vs ide drive letter stuff, but you gave no drive specifics
or IF dual boot, boot.ini not correct now

need drive types, drive letters before and after and o/s partition info
Do you still get ntldr missing notice when you leave new drive unplugged from 12V?
also did you auto create another primary on new HDD? Or just extended with one big logical?

you could try booting to Win XP Cd and start install and go to recov console, pick O/S drive and type FIXMBR, then FIXBOOT
But I dont think it will work here
I would use Partition Magic to make second drive extended with one logical - no primary, non active

You must set folder options to dont hide system files and dont hide hidden system files
>>>Then open boot.ini in notepad and post it here<<<

You can also replace ntldr (NT loader) with same file from another PC, rename your other "ntldrold"
In root of O/S you need ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini all co-ordinated to boot

 

[dfuze]

I had similar issues.

I found that unplugging all but the hard drive I was installing windows on worked. After
it was installed, I just replugged them in and viola'!

 

[skrewler2]

Make sure only one drive is marked ACTIVE or BOOTABLE

 

[Murpheeee]

The problem is he is not that computer literate and is located 7000 miles away, so all this is being done by phone...

drives are IDE, not dual boot. Original is C, new one E

If he unplugs new drive it boots fine

I believe he created new primary partition on new drive

He did say something about making new one "active"

Originally posted by: Bozo Galora
sounds like he screwed the partitiion table
possibly sata vs ide drive letter stuff, but you gave no drive specifics
or IF dual boot, boot.ini not correct now

need drive types, drive letters before and after and o/s partition info
Do you still get ntldr missing notice when you leave new drive unplugged from 12V?
also did you auto create another primary on new HDD? Or just extended with one big logical?

you could try booting to Win XP Cd and start install and go to recov console, pick O/S drive and type FIXMBR, then FIXBOOT
But I dont think it will work here
I would use Partition Magic to make second drive extended with one logical - no primary, non active

You must set folder options to dont hide system files and dont hide hidden system files
>>>Then open boot.ini in notepad and post it here<<<

You can also replace ntldr (NT loader) with same file from another PC, rename your other "ntldrold"
In root of O/S you need ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini all co-ordinated to boot

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: Murpheeee
The problem is he is not that computer literate and is located 7000 miles away, so all this is being done by phone...

drives are IDE, not dual boot. Original is C, new one E

If he unplugs new drive it boots fine

I believe he created new primary partition on new drive

He did say something about making new one "active"

Originally posted by: Bozo Galora
sounds like he screwed the partitiion table
possibly sata vs ide drive letter stuff, but you gave no drive specifics
or IF dual boot, boot.ini not correct now

need drive types, drive letters before and after and o/s partition info
Do you still get ntldr missing notice when you leave new drive unplugged from 12V?
also did you auto create another primary on new HDD? Or just extended with one big logical?

you could try booting to Win XP Cd and start install and go to recov console, pick O/S drive and type FIXMBR, then FIXBOOT
But I dont think it will work here
I would use Partition Magic to make second drive extended with one logical - no primary, non active

You must set folder options to dont hide system files and dont hide hidden system files
>>>Then open boot.ini in notepad and post it here<<<

You can also replace ntldr (NT loader) with same file from another PC, rename your other "ntldrold"
In root of O/S you need ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini all co-ordinated to boot

That's the problem, then. There can be only one active partition in the system, and that's the one that the bootstrap code will look to in order to find the OS loader. That's why you're getting the message that ntldr.dll is missing. The system is probably set to boot from the hard drive first, and then look at the CD. So when you have the XP CD in the drive it boots.

Simple solution, repartition the slave drive to an inactive partition. It may be necessary to mark the previous system partition as active again. I'm not sure about that one. Someone else here can probably say for sure, but you could try this: repartition the slave, and if the machine doesn't boot without the CD in the drive, you know you need to mark the original system partition active again. I'm pretty sure you can do this nondestructively.

 

[Bozo Galora]

there can actually be 4 primaries per drive, but only one active, up to 24 [6 drives] (A-Z minus A and B)
however third party multiboot software can make up to 100 or more by using boot/bios overlays, hiding others not selected before bios handover

he needs to use downloaded drive manufacturer floppy (make sure boot order is A first) partitioning software (free from website) to delete the partition on new drive, WHEN ITS ALONE JUMPERED AS MASTER at end of cable (due to ntldr error message when its hooked up), then jumper the drive as slave (which means no jumper at all on Seagates), hook it up to middle of cable and create new partition again as extended with XP disk manager or Partition Magic etc. - with one complete 100% drive size logical inside. Not primary, not active.
You CAN make it primary, and a primary non active will not boot, even if O/S loaded there, but in your case - just not a good idea here.

 

[skrewler2]

bozo sorry but I really couldnt' follow what you were saying, in any case none of that is needed:

if he can get into windows, just use diskmgmt.msc and only mark partition that he's currently booting from active. then in the BIOS make sure that drive is first in the hard drive priority.

 

[mechBgon]

Go into the motherboard's BIOS and first confirm that it's got the correct HDD as the boot drive. If you can get the brand & model of the motherboard, I may be able to get more specific.

I have this problem every so often with my home computer... if I add any ATA drives, it "forgets" that the Atlas 15k II (SCSI) is the boot drive, and I have to go into the BIOS and re-establish it at the top of the pecking order.

 

[Bozo Galora]

Originally posted by: skrewler2
bozo sorry but I really couldnt' follow what you were saying, in any case none of that is needed:

if he can get into windows, just use diskmgmt.msc and only mark partition that he's currently booting from active. then in the BIOS make sure that drive is first in the hard drive priority.

Thats the point guy, he cant get into windows with the ntldr missing error, hence the name NT loader. He's in kind of a pickle.
Thats why I went thru all that stuff

And as far as understanding my post, drive volumes only use letters, and there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, and A and B are reserved for floppy drives, so that leaves 24.

Note here that MBR's (master boot records) have only 4 "records" or data lines to describe partitions, hence the posibility to describe only 4 primaries, which is why extended with internal logicals were invented

(Quote)
How disks are partitioned?

All hard disks on all IBM compatible computers have the same way of partitioning. First sector of the disk, called MBR (Master Boot Record), which we will be discussing in details later, contains partition table. This table has four records, each of them can describe one partition. In the simplest case we would have all disk space assigned to one partition, like in the following example:

http://www.ranish.com/part/primer.htm
=================

Windows makes it appear it can only make one primary per drive, but if you use other software to make 4, each O/S installed per partition will work with the XP bootloader.

(Quote)

* Single Partition Windows PC: Many PCs have all of their disk space made into a single partition, and use one of the FAT file systems. Such a machine would have just a single FAT primary partition on it, and nothing else. The other three "slots" for partitions on the disk would be empty.
* Multiple Partition Windows PC - To use more than one partition at a time on a DOS/Windows system, two partitions are used. One is a regular DOS primary partition (which becomes the "C" drive). The other is the extended DOS partition. Within the extended DOS partition, all the other logical drives are created. So a drive with four logical drive letters would have the first (C) be the active primary partition, and the other three (D:, E: and F) would be logicals within the extended DOS partition.
* Multiple Operating System PC - A system with multiple operating systems could use one primary partition for each of up to four different file systems.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/struct_Partitions.htm
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/struct_Active.htm

 

[Bozo Galora]

heres the mbr for the dual boot pc i'm using here, as seen by symantec ptedit (partition table edit)

screenie

note the four lines (four max partitions primary)
EPBR button is extended partition boot record

 

[tyanni]

Originally posted by: Murpheeee
I am trying to talk my brother through adding a new HDD, over the phone


He just added a new 250Gb slave HDD to my system.
Booted into Windows, created one big partition, formatted it, rebooted and it hung with NTLDR missing error.

He booted from Windows XP CD to get a look at the partitions, deleted the new one and recreated it, rebooted it again and this time it worked fine.....unitil....he removed the CD from the drive. Now it gives a NTLDR missing error. If he puts the CD back in it boots up into Windows just fine.

Any ideas

but he CAN get into windows. He can boot to it with the cd in, and then set the drive as active

 

[Bozo Galora]

oh yeah, forgot that - lol

 

[Murpheeee]

well here's the resolution for those that are interested

he just bought the computer used a few weeks ago and the BIOS password was enabled.
It would not let him in to update the drive info.

I got him to track down the motherboard info and find the jumper to wipe the Bios password. Soon as he did that it autoupdated and now works....