Missing NTDLR

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Problem and solution all in one post! Thought I would post just in case anyone else runs into the same problem.

This morning I had my desktop pc on. There were slight fluctuations in the power supply that caused the pc to reboot. Then half way through the reboot, it happened again. And again, and again.

By the time the power had restored itself, I had a pc that would not reboot due to a missing NTDLR, which is something to do with the power from what I understand.

Anyway, tried repairing windows with the cd, but most of my dos commands were missing, as I was supposed to copy the missing files across from the cd. Gave up with that as access was denied.

Tried to reinstall windows but it refused to install on any partition as it claimed the partitions were not Xp compatible. It was impossible to install xp. I deleted the partion that windows was on and reformatted it in the hope that would give me a clean canvas, but that didn't work either.

By now I was thinking of writing a letter to edf for them to repair my pc, but after more research, I found the answer.

On my configuration, I have a 250gb SATA hard drive and a 400gb IDE hd piggy backed onto another 80gb IDE hd. The SATA drive was the one I wanted to reinstall to, and the solution was simply to unplug the two IDE drives.

I did that, rebooted and the setup allowed me to create and format the new partition.

So, onwards in reinstalling windows. I bloody hope that it cures my original problem of the missing NTDLR files.

I hope this info will be of use to someone in the future. It took me all day to solve it. I like to write down any

I think if I'd have known, I should have unplugged the ide drives, then run the auto repair on the xp cd (by going nearly as far as the reinstallation) and then hopefully it would have worked.

Anyway, 34 mins til XP is reinstalled!

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Well, slightly different solution. The 80gb hd is the problem. Think it might be cactussed. With it plugged in, the NTDLR problem appears and booting is impossible.

Unplug it and everything's fine.

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

The 80gb hd is fine. I took it out and swapped it wit a usb external drive I've got and plugged it into my laptop.

Must be the cable I guess. I'll put another hd in first and see if that works.

[AnOther]

Just for info the missing NTLDR message is nothing to do with power. It is a very common error usually associated with a drive fault.

The reason you could not reinstall was likely because natively XP will not recognise SATA drives and needs external 3rd party drivers so didn't know it was there and will not install to external drives.

Glad you're sorted anyway.

Must say in terms of continuity of supply France probably rates somewhere close to Nigeria. In less than 2 years in France we've experienced 10 times more power outages than in the previous 50+ in UK [blink]

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Cheers Ernie. Getting there slowly. I even have surge protection on my pc, surround sound system, tv etc, but it didnt prevent this.

The interesting thing about it was that the only thing affected was my pc and the lights dimming briefly. Even the livebox didn't go off which is very unusual.

It makes me wonder if my pc caused the fluctuations, but I can't see how.

[Nell]

[quote user="ErnieY"]

Must say in terms of continuity of supply France probably rates somewhere close to Nigeria. In less than 2 years in France we've experienced 10 times more power outages than in the previous 50+ in UK [blink]
[/quote]

Now I think France electric supply is brilliant, but my comparison is with Northern Ireland - Electric down a least three times a week. We also had a freak lightening bolt that killed a desktop PC stone dead [:D]

[Chancer]

In 4 years of living here not one power cut, even transient, I have never (yet!) had to reset my digital clocks etc.

Whereas in the UK I stopped bothering to reset them as they would never last longer than a month without blinking at me.

Yet I have overhead power cables here and underground in the UK.

[tenniswitch]

You don't use a UPS?  A techie like you?

I don't in France, where I only have a laptop, but wouldn't dream of running Windows in Florida without one.  During the stormy seasons (read, most of the year), we have power blips all the time.  Windows gets very cranky when not shut down properly.  And surely you've turned off the automatic reboots.

But I'm glad you've got it sorted now.

 

[AnOther]

Talking to me or LyndaandRichard ?

I do have a UPS but it's running my TiVo's because they use Linux which can get seriously unhappy with repeated power outages, I don't need one for the computers because I only run laptops now.

Auto reboot is indeed turned off, the most ridiculous default setting imagineable IMO. If you're going to BSOD you're going to BSOD and with it turned off at least you'll have a clue about what caused it.

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

I didn't know about the auto reboot. I've turned it off now. Thanks for that.

I don't have ups because I mainly use laptops. The desktop computer is only used as a media centre for me to stream the footy, watch dvds, listen to music etc. It doesn't do anything other than that.

One thing I am gutted about is that I use Meedio as my media centre, and I've lost the entire database. It was tricky to put together in the first place, and I will have to relearn it again. I did take a backup of the database, but for some reason, it's disappeared.

Incidentally, can this NTLDR error be caused by a dodgy ide cable? I've tried two different hard drives piggy backed onto my 400gb drive both give out the same error.

[AnOther]

I don't understand why you are getting NTLDR errors because of an external USB drive, it is a core NT (XP and Vista) startup file. When exactly do you get the message, is it on boot up with the external drives connected ?

A faulty internal IDE cable could conceivably produce an error but it would likely not go away or be intermittent and anyway you are using SATA. I suspect it may be a SATA driver issue as it seems that Windows is looking at the USB drives to boot from which it shouldn't.

Meedios looks quite interesting BTW.

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Sorry, I think I might not have been clear.

Internally, I have the Sata (which is the boot up drive), a 400gb ide hd and then another ide hd piggy backed onto that. It is the drive piggy backed on that is the problem.

The external usb hard drive I have, all I did was take that apart (as it is just an ide hard drive in an external case) and piggy backed that onto the 400gb hd. I did this to see if my original ide hd was causing the problem or not.

Sorry if I confused you :)

The NTLDR message comes up after the first boot up page (so it is finding all the drives, listing them) then the screen goes blank for a second or two and it's just before the windows start up screen that the NTDLR message comes up. If I don't have any drive piggy backed on, then the computer starts up fine. As soon as another drive is piggy backed on, I get the error, which has led me to believe it is the ide cable.

Meedio is very good. Been using it for a couple of years, but as I say, I've forgotten the logic behind creating the database for all my music and video files :( I don't understand where the original database file I backed up has gone as I had to reformat the computer about 6 months ago and it was there. Perhaps I CTRL X'd the file instead of CTRL V when I last installed the program. Ah well, keeps the brain cells ticking over I guess.

[AnOther]

Yes, I think I have misunderstood you.

So you have a SATA drive for Windows then a 400gb and an 80gb internally on an IDE cable.

I'm absolutely certain that the IDE cable is not the problem and I still think that for some reason the machine is looking to the piggyback drive for startup. I presume you have checked the BIOS for boot sequence and that the links on the IDE drives are properly set for Master and Slave

If they are all OK then try putting your piggyback drive back in it's external housing then fire up XPand have a look at it and tell me what files you have in the root.

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Ernie, you're a genius! I hadn't checked the bios for the sequence (as the sequence had worked fine for 2 years). The 400gb ide was set as the first hard drive and therefore as the second boot up drive (the dvd being the first in the bootup sequence).

In another section of the bios, I discovered that the 400gb was the first hd and the sata the second so, I switched them round and was then able to tell the bios to boot from the sata and not the 400gb ide one. And I've plugged the other hd back in and once windows started up it reinstalled it so everything's back how it was.

The questions I have now, when I had the problem, the boot sequence was dvd, 400gb ide and then usb hd (not sure where that one came from). How was it able to boot up (when the piggy back drive was absent) if the sata wasn't mentioned?

Secondly, this configuration has worked fine for a couple of years now. When I had the power dips yesterday, could the bios have been changed somehow?

Many, many thanks for that! :)

[tenniswitch]

[quote user="ErnieY"]Talking to me or LyndaandRichard ?

I do have a UPS but it's running my TiVo's because they use Linux which can get seriously unhappy with repeated power outages, I don't need one for the computers because I only run laptops now.

Auto reboot is indeed turned off, the most ridiculous default setting imagineable IMO. If you're going to BSOD you're going to BSOD and with it turned off at least you'll have a clue about what caused it.
[/quote]

Sorry to be unclear.  I was talking to Lynda&Richard.

You guys are light-years above me in tech-savvy (that's probably obvious), but sometimes we technophobes have stumbled across some useful info.

I'll probably be posting frantically here when I get back to France and discover what's decided to go wonky during my absence. [:D]

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Our technical knowledge is mainly by experience and trying to fix things ourselves, but there is sooo much we don't know. But we believe pretty much anything can be solved by praying to the great techno god, Google. :)

In the early days of our marriage (some 10 years ago), we had a computer problem we struggled with. We then paid for a professional technician to come in and solve it. He couldn't. A couple of days later after much searching, we solved it ourselves. Since then, most things we do ourselves. And I think these days it's getting easier and easier to do.

But I love reading this section of the forum, as there have been so many tips and tricks from everyone I have picked up myself. And sometimes (such as this case), it's the basic things you often forget to look out for.

[AnOther]

Glad you're sorted but a bit of a mystery how the BIOS has changed itself, not the sort of thing which happens.

This wouldn't happen to be Gigabyte Motherboard by any chance would it as some of these had a dual BIOS setup so in case of corruption, which could conceivably be caused by power problems,  they would automatically revert to an alternative default configuration.

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

I think the motherboard is MCI or something. We bought it on ebay pretty cheap two years ago. It was brand new, and nothing special (you don't need much power to watch movies etc), so god knows what he used. I just wanted the lowest spec system I could get that handled ide and sata hard drives. Think I only paid 200 euros for it inc delivery. Just a case, motherboard, hard drive and ram I think it was. Came from Germany.