I got the message "NTLDR missing" when I did nothing to modify any files on the root of system drive. I copied ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini from another XP system and its working again. Why did this happen?
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An0nym0us
ANSWERS: 3
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Most times when you get that message, it means that the file was either damanged or unreadable. When you replaced it with files from a diffrent computer, it fixed what ever was wrong with it. However, I don't recommend doing that to fix this issue. You have to be careful when copying system files from one computer to another. Some files are version specific. And what I mean by that is that one computer may have XP with SP2 installed and the other with SP1 installed. copyting an SP2 file to SP1 comptuer can cause issues, so be careful. You may have not messed with the system files to cause this, but not shutting down properly, uninstalling or installing programs, and other things can cause the system files to get corrutped and/or damaged. Next time try running a chkdsk/r using the recovery console, this works 90% of the time (given that you don't have a bad HD, hehe)
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If it isn't a floppy in the floppy drive, then you may have to do a repair install of XP. It appears that the boot record of your hard drive has been deleted, overwritten, or corrupted. You can boot from your XP CD, choose to install XP, it will see that a copy of XP is already there, then you can choose "Repair". Do not run "Repair Console", which will come first once you boot your XP CD.
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Most likely you are going to run R, from your Boot disk, if that doesn't fix it, you may have to go from Xp pack 1 to service Pack 2 or three. Check Ubuntu Linux platform, you are going to like it. 0 Gravity
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