Computer help: NTLDR is missing after upgrading drive
NTLDR is missing after upgrading drive
by tblanchard - 1/19/05 10:20 AMUsed Norton Ghost to make copy a 6GB drive to a 40GB drive. After making the copy and trying to boot from the new drive recieved message:
NTLDR is missing
1. Searched for information about the problem used the recovery console to copy ntldr and ntdetect.com from the XP CD to drive. Did not work.
2. Used the fixboot and fixmbr commands. Did not work.
3. After almost a day of reading about the problem with no luck I reinstalled windows XP from scratch. I decided to try backing up the first drive using Norton Ghost, instead of doing a drive copy. I backed up the drive and restored it onto the new drive. Got the NTLDR is missing message again. I assumed doing the backup and restore would copy the windows files, including the registry, but would not mess with the boot record or partition table. A wrong assumption I suppose at this point.
I see Microsoft has a utility called bcupdate2 that supposedly fixes this problem. Has anyone used the utility successfully and/or does anyone know what it does.
Additionally, if buying commercial software to upgrade drives does not work, are you stuck just reinstalling XP and all of your software from scratch??
I do not know if this is a FAT32 vs. NTFS problem or something to do with drive geometry etc. but nothing I've seen fixes the error...
Thanks in advance for any information about this problem.
Tblanchard, A Search Of These Forums..
by Grif Thomas
- 1/19/05 10:42 AM
In reply to: NTLDR is missing after upgrading drive by tblanchard
...has quite a few threads about the issue. Here is a link to one such thread:
http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6122-0.html?forumID=44&threadID=40410&messageID=473621
If this one doesn't help sufficiently, please use the "Search" option in the upper left portion of the forum main page.
Hope this helps.
Grif
ntldr == NT Boot Loader
by Yew Anchors - 1/19/05 10:49 AM In reply to: NTLDR is missing after upgrading drive by tblanchardThis is why you don't try and use Ghost for something it wasn't intended for. ntldr is the boot loader, or a piece of software stored in a special part of the HDD, which actually boots the operating system.
Since it's stored in a special location, it's often not copied by programs like Ghost, because it wasn't meant to be used as a backup program.
Next time, get an actual backup program, make a backup of your data, and reinstall the OS and applications. Windows isn't Unix, which can easily be picked up and moved to another drive or even computer. Understanding the implications of this will save many future headaches.
Ghost Problem Unique to XP?
by Schokers - 1/19/05 3:18 PM In reply to: ntldr == NT Boot Loader by Yew AnchorsThe boot loader files being in a special place must be unique to Windows XP. I am running Windows 2000 Pro and have successfully restored my C Drive (including the OS) from a Ghost image and not had any problems booting. In fact, I make a Ghost copy of my C Drive once a week to another drive (it is important to do an Image Integrity Check after the copy is made) and then delete the previous one. This way, any changes that have been made to my C Drive in the intervening period (except for a few days) will be picked up.
NTLDR vs Ghost cloning
by jcpenny - 1/27/05 3:01 AM In reply to: ntldr == NT Boot Loader by Yew Anchorse
ach time of many I have used Ghost 2003 in Win 98 SE or in Win XP Pro it never brought this problem of NTLDR missing.
First encounter was recently in Win 2000 Pro and
Advanced Server Versions. Was only using Win 2000 Versions as a kind oof experiiment. BUT in ech case showed up the said prooblem NTLDR missing press any Key
Soon found out also that with Win 2000 server Version
I cannot get many of the currently used Programs
Tey just wont want to install saying they are for XP 2000 Professional BUT Not on Server Edition...
Would have too find a Forum about Win 2000
Anyone has an answer about NTLDR and Win 2000?
best to each of you CNet fans
jean-claude mageistere22@yahoo.ca
problem answered!!!!! I found it....
by sgcromer - 2/17/05 6:23 AM In reply to: NTLDR vs Ghost cloning by jcpennyi have the same problem.. i used ghost 2003 to copy and restore to a different drive size (ide). My O/S is Windows 2000 Pro. i would get "NTLDR is Missing" every time i tried to boot. no answer i found on the web got me thru it. - Maybe i'm too stupid to get it.. i tried the w2k recover, fdisk /mbr, sys c, (that messed up my system - win98 to win2k, bad move), i tried most everything i could that applied to windows 2000 pro. nothing.
My windows 2000 is using FAT32.
THEN I REMEMBERED I HAVE A COPY OF PARTITION MAGIC 6.0 FROM ABOUT 3 YEARS AGO. AFTER BOOTING OFF OF THE DISKETTES I CREATED FROM THE PM6.0 IT SAW A PROBLEM ON THE DRIVE AND FIXED IT RIGHT OUT!.. PROBLEM FIXED.
IT WORKS NOW!!! GHOST 2003 MUST NOT DO SOMETHING QUITE RIGHT. MY PROCEDURE NOW IS : USE GHOST 2003 TO CLONE THE DRIVE AND THEN PM6.0 TO FIX THE NTLDR PROBLEM.. PRAISE THE LORD!
STEPHEN CROMER
SGCROMER@BELLSOUTH.NET
Proper Partitioning and Formatting first
by Angela - 1/19/05 2:21 PM In reply to: NTLDR is missing after upgrading drive by tblanchardI have similar problems each time I use Drive Image for this to shortcut fresh installs and I forget the solution each time until a couple of days of battling reminds me what I did wrong.
Living under the easy fdsik abilities of partition magic and FAT32 boot disks means that you can erase, partition and format your drive easily for anything except restoring drive images of Windows XP!!!!
The Drive must be newly partitioned (if desired) and formatted and set as an active bootable partition using Windows XP before you restore the drive image or Ghost Image in order for that drive to properly boot the OS.
Another problem that can occur if you muck around with the BIOS when it initally doesn't boot is if you play with the boot sequences you may accidentally not realising it change the HDD to 01 instead of 00 and this can stuff up a working boot of XP restored.
To partition and format the drive stick it in as slave to another XP OS and use drive management in XP. I don't know if there are any stand alone programs able to do this using a floppy - if there are I am sure someone will let us know.
Hope this helps
Cheers
Angela
NTLDR is missing after upgrading drive
by JOHANNS - 1/29/05 8:37 AM In reply to: NTLDR is missing after upgrading drive by tblanchardHi,
Since two months I'm tring to transfert my 40 Gig WXP pro drive to a 80 Gig.
I tried with Ghost 8 & 9 also with PQ Server Image 3 etc, always have an error like NTLDR missing when booting the new drive.
I read a lot on this subject like copying sys files on the new drive ect, but when cloning you have everything bzing copied from the old to the new drive including boot infos.
I really think about XP is storing some drive geometry info somewhere into files or registry. Microsoft KB is obviously fulled with stupid answers as always
but i think this is maybe a new M$ feature to fight against piracy;
anyway if you like me purchased several version of M$ OS with your hardware this is really ballbreaking to get stuck on a so simple clone operation. I did this with all my HD drive starting with W95 to W2000 with no probleme at all until now.
I still didn t found any solution and this link could work for some of you if the problem appeared after a disk clone or an upgrade from 95/98/Me to XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314057
:thanks Bill for all waisted time and lost nights
: just plug and pray
NTLDR solution
by pingpongboss - 2/8/05 5:10 PM In reply to: NTLDR is missing after upgrading drive by JOHANNShere's M$'s website on the problem:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/119467
i followed the instructions and booted without a problem!
Solution
by mrs_ssdouglass - 7/2/09 10:42 PM In reply to: NTLDR is missing after upgrading drive by tblanchardAfter reading through much ado, no one clearly defined the solution.
Problem: After a clone, boot sector points to the incorrect location of the HD as the HD is of different size. Fixboot doesn't fix the problem unless you first reset the boot partition using sys c:
Solution:
1) When doing the clone, don't change the size of the partition.
2) Boot into an old windows 98 or windows me floppy and type "sys c:" at the dos command line.
3) Boot into the windows XP recovery console and run fixboot.
4) Use partition magic or a some similar program to increase the partition size to fill up the HD. Beware of cluster size issues when doing this.
My experience:
Going from a 40Gig to a 250Gig HD in a laptop that didn't have a floppy.
1) Used Ghost to copy the 40Gig partition to the 250Gig, but didn't change the partition size (still 40Gig).
2) Tried 2 old windows ME CD's and 2 old Windows 98 SE CD's until I found a 98 SE CD that booted into DOS and had the sys command (Microsoft was not consistent when they created their CD's). Once in DOS, typed "sys C:"
3) Booted using an old XP CD to the recovery console and ran fixboot.
4) Tested, worked, I was able to boot into the original XP OS.
5) The partition was FAT32 and I didn't want to convert it to NTFS, and making FAT32 partitions much over 60Gig has risks, so I increased the 40Gig to 60Gig and then created a 2nd NTFS partition of 180Gig.
Customer was happy.
There has to be a better way, if anyone has one, feel free to share it. Please explain the procedure in detail because most comments above were of no help.
Thank you and hope this helps someone.
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