my home computer has been crapped out for awhile now. when i try to boot it up, it says "NTLDR is missing, press ctrl-alt-dlt to restart" ... i've tried booting from cd, and also downloaded "puppy linux" which was supposed to be able to boot from a usb thumbdrive, but no luck. any advice???

5/6/2006 9:40:27 AM

google says if it wont boot from a floppy or cd that your bios is outdated.

5/6/2006 10:37:20 AM

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=NTLDR+is+missing%2C+press+ctrl-alt-dlt+to+restart

5/6/2006 10:53:13 AM

i got it to boot from the windows xp cd this afternoon, and tried to reinstall windows, but it "encountered" some kind of "error" along the way and crapped out again. i don't know what to do... this thing is not even 2 years old.

5/6/2006 1:16:10 PM

that same shit happened to me on my ibm...i ended up sending it back to them and they fixed it

5/6/2006 1:25:55 PM

yeah, it's about to that point... this shit has been broken forever.

5/6/2006 1:28:20 PM

Boot using your Windows CD. Select repair instead of install. When you make it to a command prompt, copy ntldr and ntdetect.com from the i386 directory on the CD to the root directory of your boot drive.

5/6/2006 2:00:37 PM

^ dude, look up a few posts - he tried that.


ron, a few things could have caused this but if Windows Setup don't even run then it seems like you have a hardware problem.

Download this:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

And run diagnostics that match your PC.

5/6/2006 2:07:14 PM

Quote :

"tried to reinstall windows"

=/=

Quote :

"Select repair instead of install"

Nothing he wrote implied that he booted to the recovery console.

5/6/2006 2:12:03 PM

tried the recovery console... copied some files from the windows cd, like i saw on a help forum... now i'm getting "missing" files, like hll.dll (i think), which doesn't exist on the cd. i'll try the ultimatebootcd tomorrow. i give up for today.

thanks for the help

5/6/2006 4:04:38 PM

this happened to a friend of mine

we googled, found some link where this guy made a program himself

it had 10 different ways it could fix it and said keep trying the next one if the previous one didnt work

worked on the 3rd try

[Edited on May 6, 2006 at 6:03 PM. Reason : http://www.tinyempire.com/shortnotes/files/ntldr_missing.htm - pretty sure thats it]

5/6/2006 6:02:26 PM

One more thing that you might want to do....check your ram. Pretty often your ram will corrupt and you'll be up the creek without a paddle. Most of the time it won't even show an error for a ram problem you just won't get anything out of it. So pull out a stick and try them one at a time. Also reformat. Or you just straight up have a corrupted hard drive from kicking your computer around while it's loading in which case your looking at a new hard drive. If all else fails....scrap the computer and custom build another one(if it's a desktop). Anytime you buy a computer from a company such as Dell, compaq, gateway, ibm your looking for trouble they use downgraded parts that are slower and also don't last half as long but will be labled the same way. If it's a laptop problem all you can do is buy another. I recommend acer or alienware theres a few other good ones out there too but don't get a dell or gateway laptop they are so bad. I already had a dell laptop fail on me twice so i told them where they could put the warranty and got my money back invested in the acer and have not had a single trouble blazing speed. Hope I helped. O one more check for the ram if you boot a linux disc theres a ram check option as the computer boots.

5/6/2006 8:18:35 PM

Your harddrive sucks, and your m.b, toss the two away, buy a new one of each.

5/6/2006 11:16:47 PM