"NTLDR is missing"
Dear Fred, I thoroughly enjoy your letter. Now I'm not particularly geeky. I run a small architectural firm which means I do the computer fixes for the most part.
The other day, having suffered computer woes on two home computers that on computer 'A' required WindowsXP to be reinstalled and 'B', a laptop, required its drive to be re-imaged and software reinstalled (both long stories, but both successful outcomes) I encountered at my small office the proverbial things occur in threes: my CAD station wouldn't boot, "NTLDR is missing". As this had happened before, I had found on the internet a work around boot disk that enabled me to boot into WindowsXP. I tried a number of minor suggestions from the internet, like copying fresh from the Windows CD the boot files and ensuring that my BIOS was up to date. I considered other options, ultimately was considering a fresh install of Windows, but resigned myself to just booting with the boot CD for the time being.
That night I mentioned my frustration to my son, the computer geek, who suggested that maybe the computer was trying to boot of the wrong disk. In all of my desktop computers I have two hard drives, one completely separate for backup purposes only. So the next day I checked the BIOS, and indeed, the computer was trying to boot from the non-operating system drive. I easily adjusted the order, and voila, the computer boots like a dream. Now I don't know why the boot order got reversed, but I do know that nowhere that I found when searching for ways to resolve "NTLDR is missing" did any suggest that there might be a problem with boot order if one has more than one drive. So I thought that I'd pass this one along. Perhaps its so simple,
its obvious, but it seems worth repeating. ---Bill Menzel
Thanks, Bill! Normally, an "NTLDR is missing" message is a showstopper. Like "Missing HAL.DLL," "Invalid Boot.Ini," and "Windows could not start..." messages, you're dead in the water.
We covered ways to get past "Missing HAL.DLL," "Invalid Boot.Ini," and "Windows could not start..." messages in the article here: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=185301251 .
And normally, a missing NTLDR isn't too hard
to work around. (See
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=318728 and
http://www.google.com/search?q=ntldr+is+missing )
But a munged boot order is a nonobvious thing--- it's the kind of problem that could leave you really scratching your head and/or cost you hours of unnecessary troubleshooting and rebuilding.
I'm going to remember to check boot order when or if I ever have a "missing NTLDR" message again!
(BTW: You check the boot order in the BIOS:
http://www.google.com/search?q=enter+bios )
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