NTLDR Missing

  • Thread starter Thread starter buhite
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buhite

Maybe someone out there can help me with this boot issue. I am running
two hard drives in my pc. When I power on the primary master is not
found, but the slave is. Then after the POST it gives me the NTLDR
missing message. When I ctrl/alt/del the primary master is found and
it boots normally...this happens every single time I power on. Any
ideas???

Thanks.
 
Maybe someone out there can help me with this boot issue. I am running
two hard drives in my pc. When I power on the primary master is not
found, but the slave is. Then after the POST it gives me the NTLDR
missing message. When I ctrl/alt/del the primary master is found and
it boots normally...this happens every single time I power on. Any
ideas???
Click to expand...

Slow power-on master HD? Adjust BIOS setting for a longer disk timeout.
 
buhite said:
Maybe someone out there can help me with this boot issue.
I am running two hard drives in my pc. When I power on
the primary master is not found, but the slave is. Then
after the POST it gives me the NTLDR missing message.
Click to expand...

Thats normal because the master is missing.
When I ctrl/alt/del the primary master is found and it boots
normally...this happens every single time I power on. Any ideas???
Click to expand...

You can get that sort of effect if the master and
slave dont like coexisting on the same ribbon cable.

I'd first check that the master and slave are jumpered
correctly, you can get effects like that if they arent.

If they are jumpered correctly I'd try cable select instead
of master/slave, with a cable select cable if its a reasonably
modern system with an 80 wire ribbon cable.

If that still doesnt help try having the two drives
on different ribbon cables. That should eliminate a
problem with the two drives not liking each other.

You can see a situation where the master takes a
while to spin up, but thats not usually seen anymore
with modern drives, its more likely with older drives.

Say a bit more about the basics of the PC, how old it is etc.
 
The motherboard and slave drive are fairly new...about a year or so I
would say. I am running XP Pro. The disk that is now the slave used
to be my only hard drive, but about a month ago I had the partition
where the OS was fail. So, I had to format that partition and start
over. When I did, I had an older 40 gig laying around that installed
XP Pro on and used that as the master and set the other one to the
slave. That way I figured I could keep all my data and just use the
old 40 for the OS. It is working out fine other than the boot
problem...more of a pain than anything I guess.

I will try the cable select thing and see if that helps. Do you think
that there is a setting in the BIOS that may need changed???

Thanks for your input, and time.
 
buhite said:
The motherboard and slave drive are fairly new...about a year or so I
would say. I am running XP Pro. The disk that is now the slave used
to be my only hard drive, but about a month ago I had the partition
where the OS was fail. So, I had to format that partition and start
over. When I did, I had an older 40 gig laying around that installed
XP Pro on and used that as the master and set the other one to the
slave. That way I figured I could keep all my data and just use the
old 40 for the OS. It is working out fine other than the boot
problem...more of a pain than anything I guess.
Click to expand...
I will try the cable select thing and see if that helps. Do you think
that there is a setting in the BIOS that may need changed???
Click to expand...

That 40G drive shouldnt be too slow to spinup,
but its easy to try the bios setting to do a full
memory check and see if it is a bit slow to spin up.
 
buhite said:
The motherboard and slave drive are fairly new...about a year or so I
would say. I am running XP Pro. The disk that is now the slave used
to be my only hard drive, but about a month ago I had the partition
where the OS was fail. So, I had to format that partition and start
over. When I did, I had an older 40 gig laying around that installed
XP Pro on and used that as the master and set the other one to the
slave. That way I figured I could keep all my data and just use the
old 40 for the OS. It is working out fine other than the boot
problem...more of a pain than anything I guess.

I will try the cable select thing and see if that helps. Do you think
that there is a setting in the BIOS that may need changed???
Click to expand...


Is the hard drive with the working system on it at the head
of the BIOS' hard drive boot sequence (i.e. boot "order" or
boot "priority")? Can you see C:\ntldr and C:\boot.ini in its file
structure? Is that partition marked "active"? (Rt-clk MyComputer,
clk Manage, clk Disk Management to see the "(Active)" flag.)

*TimDaniels*
 
Timothy Daniels said:
Is the hard drive with the working system on it at the head
of the BIOS' hard drive boot sequence (i.e. boot "order" or
boot "priority")? Can you see C:\ntldr and C:\boot.ini in its file
structure? Is that partition marked "active"? (Rt-clk MyComputer,
clk Manage, clk Disk Management to see the "(Active)" flag.)
Click to expand...

It wont be that because a ctrl/alt/del sees it fine.
 
I moved the hard drive to the head of the BIOS boot order and still
have the same problem.

I do not see the C:\ntldr and C:\boot.ini. Is it possible that those
files were not copied from the windows cd when I did the install? Can
I just copy those files without reinstalling windows?

Thanks to all who have replied!
 
You won't see those two files until you set folder options in explorer
to show hidden files and also to show protected system files.

Irwin
 
I have it set to view hidden files and even did a search using
*boot*.ini and it still did not return any results. It is possible
that those files are missing from the drive. If they were not there
somewhere, would it still boot normaly when I hit ctrl/alt/del as it
does now?
 
You installed Windows on a system with two disks.
The OS was installed to the drive you specified, but ntldr was on the other.
 
View hidden files is not good enough. You have to go back into folder
properties and a few lines below the hidden files thing is another
setting for hiding protected system files. You need to uncheck that.
The files have to be there, the OS won't work without them. You also
need to be careful, because if you do something wrong with these your
system will no longer boot.

Irwin
 
buhite said:
I have it set to view hidden files and even did a search using
*boot*.ini and it still did not return any results. It is possible
that those files are missing from the drive. If they were not there
somewhere, would it still boot normaly when I hit ctrl/alt/del as it
does now?
Click to expand...


Are both partitions "primary" partitions? If one is a logical
partition, it wouldn't be self bootable and wouldn't have ntldr,
but it could be specified and booted from the ntldr/boot.ini in
the other (primary) partition. Check Disk Management - the
primary partitions have a blue band at the top in the graphic
display.

*TimDaniels*
 
Here is what I now have. I unplugged the primary slave drive to see if
it is simply that the two drives dont like each other. I powered up
and it booted fine with no problems.

However, when I plugged the slave back in and powered up again the disk
is now not showing under "My Computer". It finds it in the POST and it
shows in the device mangager, but device manager says that it is
unreadable. Is there any way to easily recover all the data on that
drive???
 
Try disconnecting and reconnecting, make sure there are no broken or
bent pins, make sure the connections are good, all that kinda stuff.
 
Tried that, still no go. Can some tell me why it shows up in the POST,
but is not showing up with the other hd in "my computer"???

I believe that the data is still there, I just need a way to get it.
 
buhite said:
Tried that, still no go. Can some tell me why it shows up in the
POST, but is not showing up with the other hd in "my computer"???
Click to expand...

Thats normally because XP will refuse to mount a drive that
it decides has a problem with corrupted data structures.
I believe that the data is still there, I just need a way to get it.
Click to expand...

I like Easy Recovery Pro, but it aint free.
 
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