SnowFella Posted February 4, 2010 Share Posted February 4, 2010 Alright, looks like my computer is on the fritz here. Had to shut it down a few hours ago as there was a thumderstorm on the horizon, paranoid about getting hit and it frying it. Once I tried restarting it some hours later though all I'm getting is "NTLDR is missing. Hit Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart" I've so far tried everything I can think of in order to fix it, short of trying to boot from a WinXP cd...mine's got lost in the recent housemove and I just can't find it. Anyone have any good ideas of things I could try?????? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CR6 Posted February 4, 2010 Share Posted February 4, 2010 Hey Snow, what version of Windows are you using? I'd suggest entering "NTLDR Is Missing" in the Microsoft Support webpage and see if there is anything helpful there: http://support.microsoft.com/search/defaul...1033&mode=r Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnowFella Posted February 4, 2010 Author Share Posted February 4, 2010 Still running WinXP here mate, or rather a dualboot setup with XP and Vista64. Hardly ever run vista though as I've got a fair few programs that just won't support a 64bit system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnowFella Posted February 4, 2010 Author Share Posted February 4, 2010 Ok, think I'm starting to get a hang on what's happened. For some reasons not even the BIOS will pick up on 2 of my drives, naturally the old physical master drive isn't one of them, all it's picking up on is my games drive and the DVD burner. Think both of the drives that it won't pick up on are on the same SATA channel (SATAII0), MB has 5 channels for a total of 10 SATA ports. So right now it looks like I might have 2 fried SATA ports I guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnowFella Posted February 4, 2010 Author Share Posted February 4, 2010 Total change of diagnosis here, now it's pointing towards my main 250gb Seagate drive. Doing some swapping around of SATA connectors I can get all 2 other drives bar that one running and recognised by the BIOS, but once I plug that drive in it seems to kick off any other drive plugged in on the same SATA channel. And just looking at the card at the bottom of the drive closely there seems to be some burnt out circuits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forrester Posted February 4, 2010 Share Posted February 4, 2010 hmm bad luck there bro.... In never fried anything (knocks on wood) once forgot to put spacers below my mainboard (first rig built) and even then my PSU saved me from frying the motherboard.... Good luck with the repairs... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnowFella Posted February 4, 2010 Author Share Posted February 4, 2010 It's just a dead harddrive though, not like it's anything overly complicated to replace. Lucky though that it's just my OS drive and not a backup drive with material I wouldn't want to loose. And it turns out it's still under warranty too, by some fluke I bought a Seagate Barracuda ES.2 drive = a server drive with 5 years warranty. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ROCO*AFZ* Posted February 4, 2010 Share Posted February 4, 2010 Surprized it was a seagate that died but you can't beat there warranties. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnowFella Posted February 5, 2010 Author Share Posted February 5, 2010 Can't say I am in a way, I've seen several Seagate drives go down over the years...and for some strange reason my age old WD drives keep on ticking without asmuch as a hickup...lol Least the beast is alive and running again, picked up a new 500Gb Seagate drive today and just finished installing Win XP on it. Now all I have left to do is reinstall about a billion programs, drivers and fixes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnowFella Posted February 11, 2010 Author Share Posted February 11, 2010 Update Turns out I likely won't be going down the warranty claim road anyways. Drive is still in warranty but the Australia based company that handles Seagates warranties demand a $30 handling fee just to recieve the drive and check it out. And that's without guaranteeing that it will be replaced. So with postage and that fee it'd cost me just about the same to get a 250Gb drive on warranty as a new 500Gb drive would out in the shops. And turns out I had made a screwup in my old setup, thought the physical drive that got fried only contained my WinXP partition and the Vista64 partition = nothing other than operating system. Unfortunately that was not the case, during installs I'd mixed the partitions up and Vista was on a totally different drive. What got toasted was WinXP aswell as my email storage, work in progress folders plus my game folders. So there went about a years worth of saved emails, some personal 3D work (all BFS material was luckily backed up to an external drive) and all game saves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forrester Posted February 11, 2010 Share Posted February 11, 2010 ohhhh darn, thats bad, very bad.... I always backup my PC on regular basis even though most stuff isn't important at all (only my photo's which I double back up on hdd and dvd) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CR6 Posted February 11, 2010 Share Posted February 11, 2010 Unfortunately that was not the case, during installs I'd mixed the partitions up and Vista was on a totally different drive. What got toasted was WinXP aswell as my email storage, work in progress folders plus my game folders. So there went about a years worth of saved emails, some personal 3D work (all BFS material was luckily backed up to an external drive) and all game saves. That is a tough break Snow. I agree there is no point shipping the HD with all your personal work on there. Would you consider contacting one of those HD data recovery companies to retrieve what's on the drive? It might be more expensive but may be very worthwhile. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnowFella Posted February 11, 2010 Author Share Posted February 11, 2010 Not with the type of data I lost this time, had it been something I desperately needed to recover then yeah I might go down that road but in this situation I think the furtest I'd go either would be trying a new controller card or possibly a case swap for the platters. Doing a case swap though is the very end of the line, kinda tricky to do, and there's no guarantee it will work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreyHaired Posted February 12, 2010 Share Posted February 12, 2010 Isn't the error a boot issue? There are some tips and tricks but those require booting from the XP cd. http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrorm...drmissingxp.htm If it is a boot issue you may still be able to set the hdd as slave and save data. Edit: "slave" meaning as second hdd in the pc you got working. Otherwise an HDD adapter can be used: http://www.logilink.org/produkte/logilink_usb_adapter.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnowFella Posted February 14, 2010 Author Share Posted February 14, 2010 Yes and no unfortunately. Yes "NTLDR is missing. Hit Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart" is a boot issue as windows can't find it's startup files...but the reason it can't find them in this case is a dead harddrive. I've tested it in another rig set for E-SATA and it's not even spinning up nor get recogniced as a drive at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeealice Posted July 6, 2010 Share Posted July 6, 2010 (edited) Surprized it was a seagate that died but you can't beat there warranties. When your computer starts, the BIOS attempts to find the primary hard drive's active partition to read the first sector for the MBR (Master Boot Record), it uses that info to load the rest of the OS. For Windows NT4/2k/XP the MBR is pointed to the NTLDR (New Technology Loader) and it takes it from there. If you get the "NTLDR is missing, press any key to restart" what's most likely going on is the BIOS either didn't look for the right drive, didn't find the right partition, it wasn't active, didn't find the MBR, or the MBR didn't list NTLDR in the right place, the location of NTLDR changed, or you are looking at a hardware failure situation (memory/cables/drive/motherboard/etc). i suggest accessing the BIOS and changing boot priorities Edited July 6, 2010 by zeealice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.