*I got the email from someone whose computer could not burn the CD on their computer, but the floppy and usb solution wouldn't work for them, so my solution was to just find someone else's computer.
*I want to draw attention to this since this come up in technical support circles sometimes. If a certain "thing" works on someone else's computer, but not your computer, there are 3 basic possiblities:
1. Your software configuration is different: Backup, format, reinstall -or- backup, format, install like they have.
2. Your hardware configuration -or- hardware failure: Replace the hardware.
3. A special mix of how your hardware differs from their hardware, extending from network cards to where your computer is in relation to interference, to where you live in the country, to certain hardware not supporting certain specifications.
*The answer to #3? Voodoo. Or at least that's what it will seem like the first 100 things you try randomly that seem to have no effect, and then 101 magically fixes everything. If you run into this situation, your best bet is to try a 3rd party, see if it works for them, then try and eliminate as many variables as possible.
*Anyway, I'm digressing, I got this email on February 20th:
PLEASE help me…I’ve tried the downloads, I’ve looked inside to make sure everything is connected, I don’t have a disc to boot up with and I am utterly desperate…. I just need to get this thing up long enough to back up some files.
Basically – I think I was able burn the ISO image on to a disk but I’m not sure….are there any other options besides that image? I’m working from my work laptop and so therefore cannot download the ISO recorder. But everytime I load the cd into my laptop and look at the properties of the file it does list it as an MS ISO Image.
My computer is ancient so I think that it doesn’t recognize the USB when I put it in or I can’t figure out what the name of it is to change the booting up sequence.
Finally – If I have the Windows XP CD – its none of the ones I put into the CD-ROM because that did not have any effect.
Please…..I’m desperate….do you have any solutions that aren’t going to cost me $300????
*I responded with this later that day:
You best and cheapest bet is to find a computer that can burn the ISO
image onto the disc uncompressed. (IE: find a computer that you can
install iso recorder to). Its possible you can ask your company IT to
do it for you in exchange for a soda (at least that's what I do).
After burning the ISO image onto a cd, it should actually display as
several files, and the properties should not say ISO.
I sympathise with this being difficult, unfortunately it must be an
ISO so that it can make the CD bootable.
You don't have to respond: but what lead up to this?
*I got this reply later that day:
Thank you sooo much for getting back to me. I actually thought of seeing if the IT folks will help.
I didn't really do anything new. The last real update was when I had it updated to Windows XP but that was over 4 months ago so I don't know.
Thanks again....I'll let you know if it gets fixed.
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8 comments:
Thanks a Lot. Great Help.
I forgot this imfo.
NTLDR I MUST HAVE GONE THROUGH 50 WEBSITES AND READ ALL NIGHT, I FOUND YOUR CLEAR DICRIPTION POSTED ABOVE WIENT TO C-NET AND DOWNLOADED ISO BURNER, AND PUT FILES ON IT, BINGO, UP AND RUNNING.
I WOULD HAVE SPENT ALL DAY RE-INSTALLING XP AND ALL THE FILES NOT TO MENTION THINGS I WOULD HAVE LOST. THANKS MUCH, HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO YOU AND YOURS...BEAR
NTLDR I MUST HAVE GONE THROUGH 50 WEBSITES AND READ ALL NIGHT, I FOUND YOUR CLEAR DICRIPTION POSTED ABOVE WIENT TO C-NET AND DOWNLOADED ISO BURNER, AND PUT FILES ON IT, BINGO, UP AND RUNNING.
I WOULD HAVE SPENT ALL DAY RE-INSTALLING XP AND ALL THE FILES NOT TO MENTION THINGS I WOULD HAVE LOST. THANKS MUCH, HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO YOU AND YOURS...BEAR
I gotta say, I admire your dedication to this topic but it hasn't helped our system at all.
We have a Compaq presario running XP home with a 64 bit athlon in it.
We didn't know whether we should download 64ntiso.zip, or fixntldriso.zip.
Anyway we tried them both.
Also, the alex feinman iso recorder program did not have any options when we right clicked on the iso image.
so we just dragged the image and burned it to a disc using windows cd burner.
We installed the cd on the bad xp machine and nothing.
But I thought about it and wondered how the hell the machine would read an iso image in first place without iso reading or extraction software.
We don't have an xp cd, so needless to say the computer will probably get junked.
We are screwed.
Been working on this for a day and a nigfht.
Does anyone on earth know how to fix this?
Replying to the Anonymous poster who started comment with "I gotta say".
I sympathize with having difficulty burning the ISO image. I would pay for a better solution but so far this is the best that has come up.
In order to make the CD, the ISO image must be "uncompressed" to the CD. When burned, it should show as a few files on the disc, not as just the .iso image.
You might try another CD burning software. I used to recommend MagicISO available at download.com, but oddly it was more complicated that the ISO burner I mention now.
you're a savior!! everything worked perfectly!
Thanks for your website. I used this to help me figure out my problem, but it was slightly different than what is posted so I want to post for other people who may have the same problem. I was getting the "ntldr is missing, press control+alt+del to restart" message (Windows XP Home Edition)...but not every time. my computer would start inconsistenly - Windows would load about every 6th or 8th time I restarted it. The way I ended up fixing is:
(1) I had a functioning laptop with XP Professional where after reviewing your website, I copied the 3 files you recommend to a USB drive - ntldr, boot.ini.backup and ntdetect.com (to locate them on my laptop, I did a search). I then copied those files to my PC, but because the file structures were slightly different, I first pasted into C:\windows\I386 [because there was no C:\I386 like on my laptop], then I pasted into just C: and I think that did the trick.
(2) However, then it still wasn't quite right so I tried system restore to about a month ago. It didn't complete, but I think just because I had unplugged my portable hard drive. Then, my PC was restarting OK until I plugged my portable HD back in.
(3) So, after several reboots, I determined that somehow the boot order got changed in all of this, so I restarted, hit F1, and changed it back to make the PC hard drive the priority boot drive. That has done the trick! So, I hope my experience can help someone else. In all of my searching online, I didn't find any website with the exact same problem I had - where it would occasionally boot up - it seemed every post was about a PC that wouldn't boot at all. Thanks!!
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