Impossible to boot Windows XP pro SP3

This is the third time that occurs and I’m getting very tired. It happens every four or five months of no problems using the PC, without any apparent reason. The first time it was a blinking cursor; the second: “A disk error occurred. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart”; now it’s “NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart”. It happens always after the second black screen in the booting process. Trying every usual means in the Recovery Console i.e. CHKDSK, FIXBOOT, FIXMBR, BOOTCFG, replacing config files from Windows repair folder, finally performing a Windows XP Repair Installation. The outcome is always the same: impossible to boot! I’m obliged to format and reinstall XP. Fortunately no data loss, as I use an additional HDD, and in any case all files in the master HDD are accessible by BART PE or Ultimate Boot. The hassle is to reinstall all programs, drives, updates etc. Could someone help me, especially to prevent any future Windows freeze?
Many thanks

 

How old is the computer is it a Desktop or Laptop.
And how old are your HDD's

 

You only need to install an imaging program and take a snapshot of your system partition from time to time, say monthly. The image file has to be stored on a different disk from your OS and, using a bootable CD version of the imaging program, you can at any time restore a system exactly as it was when the image was created. This typically saves two days of installing and configuring, and that assumes you still have all the means to do so. This works whether restoring your image to the existing hdd or to a replacement hdd if the original should fail.

There are many programs available for this, some of them free. My own favorite is Acronis True Image (not free), but Easeus Todo Backup is one of the proven free altenatives.

 

Thank you Earthling! It's a good suggestion. I'll do the next time but now wish to try to boot. Any suggestion for that? The PC is a 6 years old desktop 2 Gb RAM. HDDs are 1 year old.

 

So the message you are getting is ntldr is missing?

In recovery console use

cd.. to get to the C:\> prompt and then type in

type boot.ini

Post your boot.ini contents. Just want to know if it is set to boot off of partition (1).

Also do a dir command at the C:\> prompt to see if ntldr is indeed there. (If it is a hidden file maybe an attrib command would show it if dir doesn't.)

When you did the chkdsk did you use chkdsk /r to try to fix the errors?

 

Thank you Sach2. Yes the message is "NTLRD is missing". Boot.ini is:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM are in C:\.

I did CHKDSR /R: no errors found.

 

That all looks fine. I'm not sure what the problem is.


You mentioned you had a second HD. Is that connected as usual--no change? Sometimes if you install XP with two HDs connected it will put the ntdetect.com and ntldr on the other HD. Then if that HD is disconnected you get the type of error you have. I realize you have those files where they should be but I just want to rule out the other HD having been disconnected in case there was a copy of them there too.

 

I'd be interested to see if Partition Magic by Symantec would automatically find and fix an error. Not a free program but pretty handy for this type of problem.

 

I tried to get Partition Magic by Symantec, but it's discontinued. I'm looking for other sources to download. All two HDDs are connected and accessible by Linux, UBCD 4 Win and other similar apps. All looks fine, hardware too, so it's very frustrating to be obliged to format again.

 

Since you are familiar with partitions take a look at your HDs in Recovery Console. Just to make sure you are pointing to the correct partition.

In Recovery Console type:

diskpart
list disk (Verify that the HD you have XP installed is listed as Disk 0, you can tell by size)
select disk 0
list partition (See how many partitions are showing. Is the large partition you have XP installed on listed as partition 1?)
exit (to exit diskpart)

Edit:

Another thing to try:

Add this line to your boot.ini to give a choice of booting off disk 0 or disk 1 just to see if it makes a difference. You can do this easily from Linux.

So it becomes:

 

I took a look to my HDDs typing diskpart:

238473 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on atapi [MBR]
C: Partition1 [NTFS] 209458 MB ( 152329 MB free)
E: Partition2 (Volume) [NTFS] 29015 MB ( 10090 MB free)
238473 MB Disk 0 at Id 1 on bus 0 on atapi [MBR]
D: Partition1 (volume) [NTFS] 238473 MB ( 187095 MB free)

I also added the line you suggested to boot.ini, but I got always "NTLDR is missing..."

 

Just to inform everybody about the final outcome. I formatted c: and turning on the PC before reinstalling XP, after the BIOS, the screen displays again: "NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"!?

 

That is normal. NTLDR is installed during XP installation.

 

Yes, but why this one et not another one of the booting process?

 

Not sure I understand you properly but NTLDR is the first file the bootstrap process looks for in the Active partition.

 

I have xp and I had very similar problems almost exact, I replaced ram and its been good ever since