Ugly Xmas Eve Problem w/Startup

Having a bummer of a problem. Startup gives me a message of "NTLDR IS MISSING". I tried to reinstall windows '98, but not successful. I launched from CD and install starts fine, it goes all the way through until it gets to reboot time. On restart it can't start from HD and if I tell it to boot from CD it begins install at the beginning. A vicious loop! It's a very old Compaq Presario which was running win'98 FE. Any help out there today?

 

Well, if it said "NTLDR is missing", you don't have Windows 98. It has to be 2k or XP that was installed. [Although, a floppy formatted in XP or 2k gives that error if it's in the drive when you boot... but I'll refrain from that line of thinking.]

In any case, if the Win98 install failed like this, you're probably going to need to use fdisk to delete the existing partition, create a new one and mark it active, reboot, format, and then try to install Win98. I could step you through it better, but I've got to leave in a few minutes.

Merry Christmas, though!

 

Thanks DC! Indeed I had tried to load win2k at one point. I appreciate the help greatly. I will attempt to create a new partition and install...g'luck to me.

Have a Happy Holiday...any further advice is most welcome.

Acktom

 

Hey ack! There're lots of good walkthroughs of FDISK use on the Web, if you need one. There's a good one somewhere on Cybertechhelp.com IIRC.

 

Thanks Wisewiz. I've created an extended partition and I'm taking a stab at loading OS. Hopefully will help. The problem may still be that as I load the OS, whether '98 or 2K, after install reboot #1 it goes back to the beginning of the install.
Oops, There is only 37 MB of drive space available to create a partion with...not enough to install OS.
P.S. This is my Sister's antiquated PC.
Any thoughts? Can I unload some data without losing all on HD? What would yo do besides getting a new PC???

Acktom

 

Have you wiped the partition(s) you created before this?
You MUST have more space than that left on the HD. You couldn't have reached the error level on reboot with just 37 Megs.
Can you use your boot floppy and find out what the contents of your partitions are?
If you can access the directory of C:, say, from the boot floppy, you can remove whole directories from C: to get more room on C:,
But that's not the problem here. You're trying to install to a new partition without removing the partition you installed to LAST time (I think ... I may be confused by how you're saying it).

 

Thanks again oh wise one...help is much appreciated! I've just wiped(formatted) the HD is started from square one.

Happy Holiday!