NTDETECT failed

my friend just brought over his HP laptop only to find out that it no londer boots. He is running XP Home SP2

it gives him an "NTDETECT failed" error.

i've tried the usual

/fixboot

and copied NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM off of my XP Pro SP1 cd to his system root... all to no avail.

if i attempt to fixMBR, it says that he has a "non standard or invalid MBR"

i'm tempted to continue, thought i dont want him to lose his data...

any suggestions?

 

Hmm, if it were me I'd try and salvage the data (perhaps with a knoppix Live CD?) and then zero the disk, re partition. I can't think of what else to do, to be honest, if fixMBR won't fix the mbr

 

haha we're both cracking up cause theres a knoppix cd in front of me and we didnt even think about that

anyway, we're already trying a repair install of XP so i can at least salvage his data onto my hard drives... thanks anyway

 

Fixmbr always says that.

Its more likely to be a bootsector problem anyway. The MBR has already passed control to ntldr which went to ntdetect.com.

I would do a fixboot and replace both ntldr and ntdetect.com