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Urgent - Win8 final bricked install: "NTDLR IS MISSING"

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dotdude

Junior Member
This is urgent, pls help guys. The machine had a brand new (~1hr old) install of Win8 Pro, and (in this instance, while installing the latest beta AMD Catalyst drivers), the machine crashed (showed a blue screen with a huge 🙁 frownie face, and restarted). Then upon reboot, instead of booting into Win8, I get a black screen and:

NTDLR is missing.
Press Alt+Ctrl+Del to reboot.

That's it. Repair doesn't work. The same thing happened earlier with the same exact machine and the same exact circumstances, except it was the final release preview build of Win8 - I thought that after formatting and installing the final it wouldn't happen, but here we are again. What the heck is wrong with it - what causes this?
 
A guess is that something changed the pointer to the NT Loader in the MBR. Technically not a big deal so dont panic and erase everything. First make sure in the BIOS that the drive shows up okay and the boot order is correct. Technically you could download NTFS DOS and just fix the MBR manually (ie, just change the pointer to NTLDR). Or use the repair console on your OS disk (which is the preferred way). Here's an old instruction for XP, but looks like it should still pretty much be applicable to even WIN Hate.
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/ntldrmissingxp.htm

Worse comes to worst then just take it to a computer shop in they'll have it running in a couple minutes.
 
dotdude said:
This is urgent, pls help guys. The machine had a brand new (~1hr old) install of Win8 Pro, and (in this instance, while installing the latest beta AMD Catalyst drivers), the machine crashed (showed a blue screen with a huge 🙁 frownie face, and restarted). Then upon reboot, instead of booting into Win8, I get a black screen and:

NTDLR is missing.
Press Alt+Ctrl+Del to reboot.

That's it. Repair doesn't work. The same thing happened earlier with the same exact machine and the same exact circumstances, except it was the final release preview build of Win8 - I thought that after formatting and installing the final it wouldn't happen, but here we are again. What the heck is wrong with it - what causes this?
Click to expand...

Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 utilize BOOTMGR, not NTLDR. NTLDR is utilized by Windows 2000 and XP. So you need to fully describe your old configuration, prior to attempting to install Windows 8, and how you went about preparing your HDD for the new installation. It sounds like you're either attempting to dual-boot XP and 8 or you botched formatting your HDD that contained XP.

I haven't personally run Windows 8, but regarding the blue screen with frownie face; that doesn't sound like a Microsoft feature, it happened while you were installing a driver, and if you didn't previously have XP installed the "NTLDR is missing" message sounds very much like a malware or virus spoof accomplished by injecting code into the boot sector.


.
 
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Bubbaleone said:
Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 utilize BOOTMGR, not NTLDR. NTLDR is utilized by Windows 2000 and XP. So you need to fully describe your old configuration, prior to attempting to install Windows 8, and how you went about preparing your HDD for the new installation. It sounds like you're either attempting to dual-boot XP and 8 or you botched formatting your HDD that contained XP.

I haven't personally run Windows 8, but regarding the blue screen with frownie face; that doesn't sound like a Microsoft feature, it happened while you were installing a driver, and if you didn't previously have XP installed the "NTLDR is missing" message sounds very much like a malware or virus spoof accomplished by injecting code into the boot sector.


.
Click to expand...
Two things:

1) The frownie face is in fact a Microsoft feature. It's on the new Win8 BSOD. http://www.webpronews.com/windows-8-blue-screen-of-death-has-a-sad-2011-09

2) NTLDR is sometimes a generic error from the BIOS. So it can appear even without Windows XP being present. It doesn't really change what it implies though: that something in the boot chain is missing. If fixmbr + fixboot + Bootcfg /rebuild can't fix it, then I'm not really sure what could.
 
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I got this same error when I tried to install Win 8 on a fresh SSD. I had to change the boot priority on my BIOS setting to check the CDROM first, and this allowed the install to continue. Using custom install, I then selected the SSD as the destination for the OS. Just got to remember to switch the boot priority back to SDD first after the first restart.
 
vshin said:
I got this same error when I tried to install Win 8 on a fresh SSD. I had to change the boot priority on my BIOS setting to check the CDROM first, and this allowed the install to continue. Using custom install, I then selected the SSD as the destination for the OS. Just got to remember to switch the boot priority back to SDD first after the first restart.
Click to expand...

I got the same error message when booting up and did the same thing quoted above and it worked. No big deal.
 
vshin said:
I got this same error when I tried to install Win 8 on a fresh SSD. I had to change the boot priority on my BIOS setting to check the CDROM first, and this allowed the install to continue. Using custom install, I then selected the SSD as the destination for the OS. Just got to remember to switch the boot priority back to SDD first after the first restart.
Click to expand...
You can keep the CDROM first in your boot sequence. This is what I do because occassionally I like to boot to CD to run something like Acronis True Image. If there is nothing in the drive, or a disk that isn't bootable, it will go right to your next device.
 
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