ntldr is missing xp sp3

I have been looking at the threads to try and repair this myself. This is an HP Media Center PC running XP SP3. My son was playing Warcraft Dota - exited the game, turned off the PC when he came back the "ntldr is missing" message came up. No new hardware or software installed. I don't have XP discs but I do have the HP recovery discs that came with the computer. I was able to confirm that the bios is set to read from the CD first before the HDD's. I ran the HP recovery disc, on a black screen I had a choice of "F" for full recovery and "Q" to quit. I pressed "R" and got to the recovery / restore menu. I went through the restore process, hoping not to loose any data, nearly all my data files are backed up on an external HDD, the restore completed after about an hour. I restarted the PC and am back to the black screen with "ntldr is missing". Can you help point me in the right direction?

Thanks

 

Q. 7. When I start my computer, I get error message:

NTLDR is missing
or
Boot: Couldn't find NTLDR
​

Sol: Boot using Windows Setup CD and enter into "Recovery Console" by pressing "R". Now Log into windows installation and enter admin password. Now give following commands at prompt:
copy x:\i386\ntldr c:\
copy x:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\
Where "x" is your CD drive, change it acc. to your system.

http://www.askvg.com/frequently-asked-problems-with-solutions/

That's for XP. Hope the above helps as I never had to do it myself.

 

Hi,

I think you will need Recovery Console or a Live Linux CD to see what is going on on that drive to determine if the ntldr is actually missing or if it is a boot file problem.

You can get a recovery console iso here. Then burn it to a blank CD as an image file. You can use imgburn and choose "Write image File to Disc" then browse to the ISO you downloaded and select it and then click the double icon at the bottom of the window to begin burn process.

Boot from the CD and choose R for repair. Select Windows (usually 1), enter password if you have one set or just hit <enter> if no password.

At the prompt type dir C: and see if ntldr and ntdetect.com exist.
Let us know.

 

Follow this article step by step !! :major

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm#b

 

Just a quick heads up that the rc.iso does not include the ntldr and ntdetect files. It is only recovery console. Most steps can be followed but you since you don't have an installation CD you won't be able to copy those files. (Often an ntldr is missing message is not caused by the files being missing but a configuration problem.)

 

Thanks everyone for the help!

I took sach2's advice and burned recovery console to a cd. I was able to run it when I rebooted the PC. I did not get the opportunity to type "R" - it automatically started to run the Windows set-up. After it loaded the files to run RC it came up with the "blue screen of death". The tech info at the bottom was:
*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF78DA63C, 0x0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

I restarted the PC again with the same results.

 

That would seem like a SATA driver problem.
I guess a work around would be if you could change SATA mode in BIOS to IDE emulation. Can you see any SATA related options in your BIOS F10 at boot (I believe that is the key for HP).

 

There is a solution here !! :major

http://social.technet.microsoft.com...p/thread/a4428641-e7f4-4c57-8afb-4dedfb098670

 

Thanks everyone for the help. The PC is back up and running. I re-seated the hard drive cables and ran recovery console. All my data and files are still there but some of the software will have to be replaced.

Thanks again for all the advice!!