NTLDR is missing...

[Exile69]

Well, last night with a new CPU cooler a friend gave me I decided to play with fire. I have hit 300Mhz HTT stable with my setup and stock cooler and I wanted to see how much further I could go with extra cooling. Well with no luck anywhere past 300Mhz HTT I decided maybe a little extra voltage would do. Here's the bad part. I upped the voltage to 1.475v*123% (which I didn't actually know what it was, I just brought it from 1.55v*110% so I figured it could've been too much. Booted into windows, opened CPU-Z right away, and it tells me I'm at 1.77v. Now I remember reading somewhere that anything this high is very dangerous and can kill your memory controller in 30 minutes. Well, immediately after seeing the voltage I restarted my comp, went into the BIOS, and brought it back to normal settings. Now, sometime after this, I'm not exactly sure when..it could've been right after this or a couple boots later, but as I was trying different clock settings and trying to boot into windows I get this error, NTLDR is missing...press any key to restart, right before it would normally boot to windows. At first I thought it was a memory error, so I pulled 1 stick and brought it back to the default setting and ram Memtest86+, no problems. Popped the other stick back in, no problems. Memory controller isn't dead, thank god. After clearing the reseting the CMOS, removing the physical CMOS battery for 15 minutes and clearing it, and still the same error, I called it quits and told myself it was time to do some research. I googled it and it seems to definetly be a windows/hdd issue. So I went ahead and tried a repair install. After..Checking you hardware configuration.., which is right after pressing any key to boot from CD, the screen goes black and refuses to go any further. So, in order to avoid any attempted Windows loading, I remove the IDE and power cable from the HDD and try to boot that way. Boots fine and asks for a boot device..normal. So, I put the Windows disc in without a HDD and, to no ones surprise, it boots and goes through the normal begining stuff. But what good is this without a HDD? I did this at a friends house, a little LAN we were having actually, and didn't have the proper resources to try to fix anything. Alright guys, I really need your help here. This is being posted from the friends house so when I get home I can properly troubleshoot and hopefully get things working again with your help. If you have any suggestions or experience with this problem, please feel free to post. I'm really lost right now. I think noob has worked for the devil itself, Microsoft, so maybe he can offer some help. Thanks in advance.

[Aedan]

Sounds like NTLDR or NTDETECT.COM are missing or corrupt. Boot from the XP CD, go into the repair console, and copy the two files (NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM) from the i386 directory on the CD back to the hard disk. Also, check to see that your BOOT.INI file is still intact.

[Exile69]

That was the problem. If I went to boot from the CD it wouldn't go past the 'Setup is examining your hardware configuration'. The screen would just go black after that. What I ended up doing is putting my HDD in my other computer when I got home, wiping it, putting it back and reinstalling. It's working now and I'm using it..it's just now I'm going through the hours and hours of reinstalling all my programs, not even thinking about my music. Ah well..although, I'm still wondering how overclocking too much can tear apart your configuration files..could it have been booting into a very, very unstable Windows therefore causing the error?

[MONKEYMAN]

ive wiped out that file about 15 times, however using the recovery console always fixed it for me, I think when the overclock goes bad it affects the ide controller cus I always get bad system files when it borks.

[Aedan]

There's several places where data can be mangled with a bad overclock. RAM is one of them, and can result in allocation maps on the disk being trashed, along with bad data being written.

[chrisbard]

Originally Posted by Áedán

Sounds like NTLDR or NTDETECT.COM are missing or corrupt. Boot from the XP CD, go into the repair console, and copy the two files (NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM) from the i386 directory on the CD back to the hard disk. Also, check to see that your BOOT.INI file is still intact.

...or from the console type fixboot...

[barneygumble742]

i've gotten in the habit of using a linux live cd and then copying files that way. i no longer trust the xp safe modes and the system restore feature.

[bradmax57]

oh man, i used to get that all the time when overclocking just that bit too much, 5/10 times putting back to stock would solve it but normally meant a reinstall, i hate the repair option on xp, normally I create a decent ghost image of windows on DVD or a partition before I go crazy

[Repo Man]

You can also install the Recovery Console so it is an option during boot up.

How to install the Recovery Console
You can install the Recovery Console on your computer to make it available if you cannot restart Windows. You can then select the Recovery Console option from the list of available operating systems during startup. Install the Recovery Console on important servers and on the workstations of IT personnel. This article describes how to install the Recovery Console to your Microsoft Windows XP-based computer. To install the Recovery Console, you must be logged on as an administrator.

Although you can run the Recovery Console by starting directly from the Windows XP CD, it is generally more convenient to set it up as a startup option on your startup menu. To run the Recover Console directly from the CD, see the "How to use the Recovery Console" section.

To install the Recovery Console, follow these steps:
1. Insert the Windows XP CD into the CD-ROM drive.
2. Click Start, and then click Run.
3. In the Open box, type d:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons where d is the drive letter for the CD-ROM drive.
4. A Windows Setup Dialog Box appears. The Windows Setup Dialog Box describes the Recovery Console option. To confirm the installation, click Yes.
5. Restart the computer. The next time that you start your computer, "Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" appears on the startup menu.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q307654

[robbie]

Thanks Repo.