I had windows installed before with no problems but after uninstalling nero 8 trial, when the pc restarted the prompt came up that the 'ntldr is missing, press control, alt, delete to restart.' I tried the fix for this in the repair section of the windows xp disc, (copying the file from the xp disc to C:\) but got an 'access is denied' on the next line when I pressed enter, so I could not go any further.
I used windows for a while just booting with the cd but in the end I decided to reinstall windows completely. After doing so, on restarting the system on first reboot the same message came up again as regards the ntldr and windows still won't start without the original xp cd. I thought reinstalling would fix this problem. Is there something else I can try.
Sorry if this is long winded, but I thought I'd better give as much detail as poss. Thanks for reading and in advance for any help offered.
hedley
Hello,
You should not be getting an error stating ntldr is missing after a fresh install from a valid Windows disc.
Make sure that you do not have a floppy in the floppy drive (if you have one).
If the disc is valid, and there is no floppy in the drive I would suggest trying a different hard drive.
HFCG,
Thanks for the reply. The windows cd I have is a valid copy but I have decided to buy myself a new drive for windows and programmes alone. I don't know why the file didn't load, I checked last night and it is definately on the disc in the i386 folder. So here's hoping everything goes okay at the weekend!!
Thanks again for the help, much appreciated.
hedley
As well as the excellent advice provided by HFCG it might be wise to have a look here: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm
This will give you a good overview of the problems and the potential solution…..you may also need to rebuild your MBR.
When you attempt to copy over the 3 essential boot files (ntldr, ntdetect .com and boot.ini) it is essential to do so from the Recovery Console, otherwise the dreaded "Access denied" message is likely. It is usually best to copy them to the root of your c drive
Regards and good luck
paws
Hi paws, thank you very much for that link. I was able to get into my bios following it and found out that my boot order was wrong. Must have got changed somehow. Windows now boots from my hard disk. To think it was so simple to fix and I've been tearing my hair out for nearly a month! Guess I'll have a spare hard drive now.
Thankyou all for the help, much appreciated.
hedley
Regards
paws