Hard Drive Crash: "NTDL is missing"

**Biggly** · 06-03-2008, 02:16 PM

Recently had a nightmare come true - my hard drive crashed.

I had 2 PCs, one my working machine, the other as a back-up. My newer, working PC, had a dead CD rom drive ever since I bought the thing. Took it back, they sparked it back into life but within a couple of days it died again. Couldn't be arsed with it as I use a usb drive between machines and rarely load any CDs anyway.

Then my backup machine died - wifey put something from work with a virus on it and killed the thing basically. So while saving up for a 2nd replacement as the old one was pretty knackered anyway, have been paranoid about my main hard drive.

Then last week booted up and got "NTDL is missing. Press control, alt and delete to restart" - which obviously did no good as it just gave the same result.

Trying to reinstall Windows resulted in "There is no hard disk drive attached to this device" - and after that just got "Boot disk failure" at every start attempt.

4 years of Biggly source codes and over $2000 of software, gone. I had the source codes from version 1.1 to 2.0 on CD but A. don't trust CDs and B. no software to work with them.

I was not a happy bunny but I don't post this for sympathy but to explain how to fix it if this happens to you. All is not lost, even if it seems to be and 19 out of 20 box-selling "technicans" at local computer stores "recommend" formating the drive.

What I did was to purchase a 2nd hard drive, installed it, just a matter of plugging it in really, then installed windows on the new hard drive. Once booted up I was able to access the original drive as a "slave" drive.

From there I could copy over some of the missing files and could then get Windows to recognise the drive existed, meaning I could reinstall Windows on my original drive. That left my files intact and I was able to remove the new drive and boot up again from the original.

Sounds more simple than it was, not least because the original drive was a "SATA" and it only had one Sata slot/cable but installing an IDE drive worked in the end.

I won't go into the full details as you'll never remember and won't be able to access this post anyway - my point is just remember this - if your PC won't start and says something is missing, it's probably just a corrupt boot sector and installing a 2nd drive may well allow you access.

DON'T take the "advice" to reformat the drive as you'll lose every single thing on your computer, from internet favorites to, well everything.

Hope that helps someone one day! It was actually a week of messing around and talking to some serious idiots at various shops, until I finally found someone with a brain who tested the hard drive and confirmed it could still be accessed. "Not booting up" is not the same as "totally dead".

Obviously if you can try booting in "safe mode" and doing a "system restore" but mine was failing to get that far.

Another tip - never ever update your BIOS. I made that mistake trying to get my built in sound card to work again. The MSI website scanned my machine and downloaded a new update. Sure, the audio worked but it killed the built in ethernet card, so had no freakin' internet access and still don't. In the end had to buy a new PC just to get back online but at least I can access all my files again.

A very stressful week! But like I say, my main point is don't give up on a hard drive just because it won't boot. You may still be able to get to it with a 2nd hard drive.

B.

**goob** · 06-03-2008, 02:24 PM

Shit. You did'nt try booting off the XP disk into recovery console and copying e:\i386\ntldr c:\ & e:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\ off the disk? And editing the boot.ini?

I guess if it was'nt seeing the drive then you would be fucked. Good job. I'm sure someone mentioned that Ubuntu can be booted from disk and can see drives that Windows can't.

**Biggly** · 06-03-2008, 02:46 PM

Yeah, I did try the "Press R to enter recovery console" but just got the "No hard drive attached to this device" crap.

I knew it was potentially functioning because it showed up during the boot: Maxtor, model blah, serial blah etc.

Then it went from file missing to simple "boot disk failure" and according to the Windows CD there was no drive at all.

I couldn't copy from the CD but was able to copy from the installed drive.

I didn't realise how powerful my old machine was, as most of the "new" machines were below the 2.66Gz twin core intel thingy even today. Happily I now have a 3.0Ghz, this time with a fill gig of ram. Can't say it's noticably faster though.

Have spent the last couple of days making CD backups (pulled the CD drive out of the dead backup PC) and transferring files. I'm going to be a lot more organized when it comes to storing software on this new machine. Every single "exe" program, zip of an exe program etc is going to be in one single folder. Just trying to find them on the old machine to copy over to this one has been a pain, so am making it easier to do backups this time around.

The irony is that when the old machine finally rebooted I knew it was working because I could see the Amanda backup program boot screen.... No freaking use if you can't get to it though!

Also living here in Borneo there's a lot of powercuts (thunderstorms) but I've discovered the battery backup thingies are much much cheaper than I thought. Basically a rechargable battery that supplies a steady mains voltage (240 volts here or in the UK, 120 I believe in the US?) so if the power cuts out your computer continues working long enough to close things down properly and shut the machine down. I figured those things would cost thousands but no, less than $100 even for the top end jobbies.

Can't afford one right now but that's next on my list. We get a power cut at least once a week here. Often for only a few seconds but that's plenty enough to fuck things up

Doesn't do your boot disk sector any good either!

I have a further problem - a lot of my software doesn't seem to work on this machine properly. I insisted on XP, didn't want Vista but I think this motherboard is built specifically for Vista. I'm getting the exact same file assocation problems that Vista users report, even though I'm running XP.

According to the box it can run a quad core CPU. I didn't know there was such a thing but for now I'm sticking as I am, 2 CPUs is plenty and I prefer XP.

B.

**maniclion** · 06-03-2008, 02:58 PM

Slap in a DOS disk and try to get into c: or are you one of the many who doesn't have a low level floppy operating system for emergencies anymore? Might I suggest buying one of these ultra inexpensive external hardrives and back up your important crap as often as possible....I have 2 externals and i rotate them from office to home and have all my important data on both my work pc and home pc's plus on the 2 external drives....that way I always have a back-up not physically in the same area as my PC's

**Mudge** · 06-03-2008, 03:10 PM

DOS wont be able to read an NTFS or FAT32 formatted drive.

In other cases, Bootdisk.Com

NTLDR is missing was probably the error, the NT Loader. You might be able to successfully Ghost the drive, sometimes that works when booting it wont.

**Gordo** · 06-03-2008, 03:35 PM

Buy a dvd-rw drive that comes with Nero OEM software. You'll get Nero backITup, which you can schedule to back up to DVD-RW nightly.

That's a very cost effective solution.

Really, you should mirror your drives if it's mission critical.

Another tip - never ever update your BIOS.

the caveat should be, unless you understand what you're doing. In the future, don't buy MSI stick with EPoX, ASUS, Abit or basically, anyone else

.

**maniclion** · 06-03-2008, 04:28 PM

Originally Posted by Mudge

DOS wont be able to read an NTFS or FAT32 formatted drive.

In other cases, Bootdisk.Com

NTLDR is missing was probably the error, the NT Loader. You might be able to successfully Ghost the drive, sometimes that works when booting it wont.

Yeah I forgot that I have NTFS4Dos on another disk in my dusty old floppy bin, god it's been so long since I've had to use those things I should check and see if they even work anymore, i don't think I've touched a floppy disk since 2004....bootdisk.com is a great site I should go DL some of those things on cd's just in case...

**danzik17** · 06-03-2008, 06:30 PM

If you know what you're doing, you can also try to repair the MBR which can fix the missing NTLDR error.

**maniclion** · 06-03-2008, 08:25 PM

Use the XP recovery utility FIXMBR, if that don't work use FIXBOOT, if that don't work buy an Abacus....

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