Saturday, February 23, 2008

Got back in, ran bat file, but now in reboot cycle

*Sometimes I wonder if someone else has a ntldr is missing webpage out there and they have a different set of instructions but my email address.
*I got this email 6 days ago:
Hi Miles,

I did the floppy fixntldr you presented and it worked great! I had the NTLDR MISSING message.

However, when I went to double click on the fix item (#1 did it for me) the entire disk loaded into the start up sequence without offering a yes or no option. Now it is there as a permanent installation of the entire menu. This is fine except than now there is another startup problem due to a supposid "improper shutdown" Now, when the fix step is initiated it asks if I want to startup notmally, etc.

No matter which selection I make, the pcreboots and cycles back to the beginning - just a complete, unending cycle.

How can I remove the menu from the hard drive without booting? I tried a xp repair by booting with the xp installation cd but it still won't get past the cycle.

Any suggestions? If you can help I will certainly donate to the cause.

Thanks in advance,

*I apparently missed this one and didn't respond until today:
My apologies for such a delayed response. I'm a little uncertain if we are on the "same page". Did you follow the directions off http://ntldrismissing.com/ that forwards to http://tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm
? I'm asking because I'm not sure of the context of "double click on the first item the entire disk loaded into the start up sequence without offering a yes or no option".

At any rate. If your computer is stuck in a reboot loop. Try pressing F8 as it is starting up, going into safe mode, and see if there's anything you can do there.
IE: Kill startup programs; uninstall new hardware drivers, set video settings to the lowest level, backup your data (most important), run chkdsk, etc.

If this doesn't get you back in, try options 2, 3, etc.

If you still can't get back into Windows, remove the drive, put it into an external storage enclosure, backup the data, reformat and reinstall.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I think you need to add an overlooked simplistic solution to the top of your page. To show you how dumb some of us can be let me tell you my story. This is the 2nd time I've seen this error. Both times were when I was trying to install a new HD in a multiple HD system. The 1st time I gave up and overwrote the HD. This 2nd time I was very happy to find your page but spent 4 hours working out your suggestions until I figuared out the problem. The problem was that I booted the system without the boot drive. The system didn't boot, obviously; I realized the problem and put the boot drive back in. Now I get the ntlds error. The problem, unbeknown to me is that the system has now marked a non-system drive as the active drive and no matter what I do I can't get in without your disk. The simplistic solution I am suggesting is that you remove all drives except the boot drive and reboot. The system will now remark the boot drive as active, then you add back in the other drives everything will be back to normal

Anonymous said...

Thanks Don,

Your solution did worked great for me..

Anonymous said...

In XP, I acidentaly marked a data drive active when trying to set the drive letter. I could not deactivate it. Neither could I mark my C drive where XP was installed as active.

I tried the solution of removing the data drive and it booted fine. But when I re-install the data drive it still has the ntldr is missing message. I tried using the XP repair console, but it ends up with the same bad message.

Anonymous said...

I did find a way to fix my problem.
when booting the bios sellect F12 boot options. Then select master ide drive (instead of C disk). It booted fine. If I looked at my disks with the disk manager it shows the data drive as being active.
From a command window prompt use diskpart. commands in caps
LIST DISK
sellect the disk you want to not be active
SELECT DISK (NUMBER)
LIST PARTITION
sellect the partition that is active
SELLECT PARTITION (NUMBER)
INACTIVE
that will inactivate the active partition.
I rebooted it worked fine.

Anonymous said...

I was trying to install a new copy of Window 2000 on my computer with SATA hard drive. I got the message NTLDR is missing. What I had to do to fix this was go in to the BOIS to set floppy first; then CDROM; then my hard drive. After that I could install windows

Anonymous said...

ok to make it short....i have a toshiba M45-S355.....my cd rom gave up on me....so did my XP....installed fedora 12 to backup some stuff...and now chewing on my nails trying to figure out a solution to get the XP back on track(which says ntldr is missing).....usb boot is disabled...so getting pretty desperate as i need to work on my undergrad project......please help guys :(

m said...

Hey there friend. You can always email me to ask for more help (contact info at milescomer.com), that way I can email you back. Otherwise I hope you are coming back to this blog to read the answer.

Regardless, you mentioned that you were unable to use the cd or usb solutions, I'm guessing floppy is out as well. This will make it difficult, and beyond my expertise of using a boot disk to "route around" the problems.

How did you get Fedora 12 installed without usb or cd?

I'm thinking two different options:
1. Pull the hard drive, slave it off another computer, and try the fixes there.
2. Try the fixes from inside Fedora 12 to get it fixed.

Fixes:
My Site: http://www.tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm#What_if_the_bootdisk_worked,_but_I_can't_get_into_Windows_without_it?

ComputerHome: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm