Urgent Help needed - reformatted drive, now notebook won't boot.

[Prufrock]

Help! I've had to reformat a laptop hdd, as windows was totally corrupted. The idea being that I would do a fresh windows install. I reformatted by sticking the hdd in an external enclosure and putting on my pc (also did this to save the data from the drive). Now I'm getting an "NTLDR is missing. Press Ctl Alt Del to reboot the system" when I try to boot up the notebook. I'm trying to boot from the cd drive to install windows, but it won't let me get that far. F8 won't even let me into the BIOS options to change the boot up. Any ideas?

[Dan]

Are you sure F8 is the correct key?

[Prufrock]

Sorry, meant F2.

[Dan]

Try F12 as that might give you an option to boot off a device.

[Prufrock]

F12 tried to boot from wireless lan (then went back to NTLDR is missing). F9 gave me the boot options, but even when I tried booting from CD, the NTLDR is missing thing came back.

[Prufrock]

I guess the question should be how do I get the NTLDR file onto the root directory of the formatted drive?

[Dan]

I can't understand why the laptop won't boot off from the CD, is it definitely a bootable CD?

[Prufrock]

I can't understand why the laptop won't boot off from the CD, is it definitely a bootable CD?


It's Windows XP. It's not a boot cd. I'm trying to install the OS, as the drive is totally clean now. Not sure why it's even looking for NTLDR, as there's no OS to load!

I'm going to mess with the drive using Partition Magic. The drive is back in an external caddy and hooked up to my desktop now.

[Dan]

It's looking for ntldr because you wiped out the master boot record when formatting the hard drive in a usb enclosure.

An original Windows XP CD will be bootable.

[Prufrock]

I've got an original Windows XP CD - it's not booting from that.

[Dan]

You could create a bootable XP CD by following the instructions here

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=297

[Prufrock]

Trying that now, thanks.

[Prufrock]

Nope, that didn't work. Still getting NTLDR is missing... It won't boot at all from the cdrw drive.

[Dan]

Try this boot cd, just to see if your drive is working.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

If that cd works then you may be able to use one of the file tools, so you should be able to swap the cd for the xp cd, then you can browse to the i386 folder and run winnt.exe to start the xp installation process.

[Grandmaster]

Are there options within the BIOS to force the machine to boot first from CD?

[Prufrock]

I can't get into BIOS. F2 won't open up the BIOS options, even though it is supposed to.

Cheers for that, Dan. Will give it a go.

[Prufrock]

Nope, that didn't work either, Dan. Same old message coming up about NTLDR is missing. Going to try Linspire Live now, to see if I can boot up that OS from CD.

[ian turner]

so just out of mild curiousity since hey all laptops are identical and there are no differences but er what is this laptop you're trying to get into the bios of (just on the off chance that someone has had a similar problem on the same machine) and did you change any jumpers on the harddrive when inserting it into the external drive caddy.

[BaggyDave]

It maybe that the CD Drive ( DVD or whatever it is ) is stuffed, in this case it will jump to the next device in the list hence still reporting that error

[Dan]

Yeah sounds like the CD drive is knackered.

[Prufrock]

Didn't change the jumpers on the drive when sticking it in a caddy. The laptop is a Hi Grade (don't laugh, my dad bought the damn thing of QVC about 3 years ago!). Off to test the thing with my laptop's dvdrw now.

[mklion123]

whats the model number of the laptop?

[mklion123]

hi grades web site is hi grade (http://www.higrade.com/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=813) they've got tech support, FAQ's and ftp for drivers and such

[JOV]

Question - why did you remove the drive to reformat it rather than using the laptop reformatting using DOS or the XP CD - It seems to me that the problem is the laptop is looking for NTLDR on the HDD and of course it is missing as you have reformatted.

It is strange that you cannot enter the BIOS - unless you can change the BIOS to either boot from floopy or CD then you are stuffed- the only option would be to install an OS using another machine - your drivers etc would be wrong but you should be able to change them later when the HDD is back in the original machine.

[JOV]

see this

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314057

[Prufrock]

It's my dad's laptop. His main priority was saving his data, hence the drive coming out and being stuck in a caddy. I haven't changed the BIOS at all. I can't get into the BIOS. Even if the laptop is looking for the NTLDR when booting from the HDD, it shouldn't stop me being able to boot from the CDRW. However, it won't work. F9 brings up the boot configuration (and nothing else) so I can choose which device to boot from. However, no matter which I pick, NTLDR comes up. That shouldn't happen regardless of the HDD when booting from the CD drive.

The MS link doesn't seem to apply to XP. This machine has always run XP. I've spoken to a bloke I know who runs his own IT business. He reckons the BIOS is corrupted.

[Prufrock]

Update (thanks, MKLion). The nice bloke at HiGrade has just told me that I need to download KillCmos and put it on floppy, then boot the laptop from an external floppy drive to reset the BIOS, as it is definitely a BIOS problem.

[JOV]

Let us know how you get on