Mystery of disappearing NTLDR

  • Thread starter Thread starter Thagor
  • Start date Start date
T

Thagor

Hello all

Sometimes when I boot up Win2k,
I get the message C:NTLDR missing.
This does not happen regularly - only intermittently.

I do not have a virus.
I'm fairly sure I do not simply delete my root directory by accident.

The first time it happened,
I was at a loss and reinstalled.
Now I just keep the few root files on a diskette,
boot from that, and then copy to C:
- so it's not a great tragedy
- but can anyone explain this mystrery ?

Thanks in advance, from Ray
Click to expand...

I had this happen once. As it turned out, I had the page files set up
on the secondary drive and it was going bad on me. Once I replaced the
drive, the problem was never again seen.
 
Hello all

Sometimes when I boot up Win2k,
I get the message C:NTLDR missing.
This does not happen regularly - only intermittently.

I do not have a virus.
I'm fairly sure I do not simply delete my root directory by accident.

The first time it happened,
I was at a loss and reinstalled.
Now I just keep the few root files on a diskette,
boot from that, and then copy to C:
- so it's not a great tragedy
- but can anyone explain this mystrery ?

Thanks in advance, from Ray
 
Sometimes when I boot up Win2k,
I get the message ..
This does not happen regularly - only intermittently.
Click to expand...
- but can anyone explain this mystrery ?

Thanks in advance, from Ray
Click to expand...

I cannot but reading archieves newsgroup discussions at Google
may give you the answer

http://groups.google.com/

Do a search on

"NTLDR missing"

I have had similar problems on different computers at different
times.

Farouk
 
I agree with Thagor that this smells like a hardware problem.
Intermittency makes it interesting. It would be good to know whather
there are ANY other oddities that occur from time to time, like sudden
very slow system responses (that may clear up spontaneously) or the
occasional BSOD. Suggestions:
- PCs vibrate a tiny bit. Make sure all cable connections and jumpers
for all drives are secure.
- run chkdsk against all drives. First with no parameters, just to get
the report of what it finds. If trouble found, run chkdsk /f /r
- download from the drive manufacturer(s) their disk diagnostic(s).
These will be bootable diskette images; when run they'll check for
subtle problems. They'll instruct you, if necessary, to contact tech
support. Mfrs will replace drives for a surprisingly long time.
- check Device Manager for anything amiss. It's buried in ControlPanel
AdminTools.
- Consider also what if any hardware or software changes you might have
done around the time this symptom started.
- Consider preparing for the eventuality that the hard drive in question
might fail completely, suddenly, and irretrievably. Hard drives are
getting cheaper by the minute, if that's consolation, and as Chicken
Little said, best you get ready pronto.

Deleting your root directory by accident would be quite an
accomplishment! Had you ever done so, no diskette would help. :-)
 
Hello and thanks to all helpers so far,

Might this be some sort of FAT32 / NTFS incompatibility ?
I recover from this situation whenever it happens
by booting from a 3.5-inch diskette
and then simply copying ntldr, boot.ini, etc. from this diskette to C:

Microsoft knowledge base mentions this and a certain
<bcupdate2> utility, which unfortunately I've been unable to find on MS
pages.

Best regards, Ray
 
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