NTLDR not found

[Muse]

I'm helping a guy on the phone who has a Win2000 box that's having this error. What can we try to fix it? I saw some posts about fixmbr, but what's that and how do you run it. A search of my Win2000 system on fixmbr turns up nothing.

Thanks.

 

[Mavtech]

FIXMBR is a command line utility for fixing the master boot record. The file that is missing, I think you can find it on the 2000 CD.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Mavtech
FIXMBR is a command line utility for fixing the master boot record. The file that is missing, I think you can find it on the 2000 CD.

The guy I'm helping has a laptop separately, so I can have him copy the NTLDR file to a floppy, but I figure since it's a hidden file he can't copy it without a switch to the DOS copy command, am I right?

If FIXMBR is a command line utility, how can we use it? Get to it?

 

[Mavtech]

I have never had that problem myself but I know it is also found on an XP/2000 bootdisk as well as the CD. Here is a page I found that may help:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320397


As for the FIXMBR, it is executed in the command line aka DOS. Here's a page on FIXMBR:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/.../home/using/productdoc/en/bootcons_fixmbr.asp

 

[Muse]

I had him run recovery console but the problem persists. Thing is, he doesn't have any data on the drive, so a complete reformat/reinstall of Win2000 isn't a problem so that's what we're doing. Deleted the OS partition (it's the only one) and are reinstalling Win2000 from scratch. Now, I suppose that will cure the problem. It started when some guy was helping him configure the system. I have no idea what they did. I think they installed a video driver or monitor driver, or so I'm told. Dunno. I think I'll have to find them a way to get a Win2000 display adapter driver installed (at present, they don't know what the display adapter is), but that's another story.

 

[bozo1]

If there is nothing on the drive, just do a W2K install.

If you want to fix it (assuming they didn't screw up anything else), boot off the CD, run a repair and tell it to inspect (repair) the startup files. It'll replace what is missing. (You need to rerun the service pack after that.)