How to Fix “NTLDR is Missing” Computer Errors

When your computer starts, the BIOS attempts to find the primary hard drive’s active partition to read the first sector for the MBR (Master Boot Record), it uses that info to load the rest of the OS. For Windows NT4/2k/XP the NTLDR (New Technology Loader) takes it from there. If you get the “NTLDR is missing, press any key to restart” what’s most likely going on is the BIOS either didn’t look for the right drive, didn’t find the right partition, it wasn’t active, didn’t find the MBR, or the MBR didn’t list NTLDR in the right place, or the location of NTLDR changed.

Here’s how to fix “NTLDR is Missing. Press CTRL+Alt+Del to restart” error and get back into Windows.

“This solution worked for me and was developed by Miles Comer at http://ntldrismissing.com/, visit that site for the most up-to-date information, and following is a copy of that websites data:

What you’re going to do to fix this problem is make a NTLDR boot disk to get back into Windows and then fix the files on your hard drive. This should be the first step to solve this problem because you have to make sure that your Windows installation is still working and not corrupted. If you can’t even boot from the NTLDR boot disk, then most probably you’ll have to reformat your hard drive and reinstall Windows.

Here are the instructions to do create a NTLDR boot disk:
1. Get a blank floppy (whatever is on it will be erased), and put it into a working computer.
2. Download fixntldr.exe onto a working computer (fixntldr-winnt if you are using Windows 2000 or Windows NT4).
3. Run the fixntldr.exe file by double clicking it. Click OK to overwrite the blank floppy disc in the working computer, you should see some screens about writing a new floppy disk.
4. Put the new floppy you have just created into the computer that gets the NTLDR is missing error message.
5. Start the broken computer with the floppy in the floppy drive. Once your computer gets past the BIOS screen your computer should try to access the floppy drive and you should see a black screen with white letters that says:

1ST TRY THIS seleccione esto primero
2ND TRY THIS essayez ceci en deuzieme
3RD TRY THIS wahlen Sie diesen Third
4TH TRY THIS selezioni questo fourth
5TH TRY THIS selecione este fifth
6TH TRY THIS seleccione este sexto
7TH TRY THIS essayez ceci en septieme
8TH TRY THIS wahlen Sie dieses achte
9TH TRY THIS selezioni questo nono
10TH TRY THIS selecione este decimo

This file is set up to automatically select the “1ST TRY THIS” choice after 30 seconds. Try it first, if it was the wrong selection, you will likely get one of these four errors:

1. Windows could not start because file “\system32\hal.dll was missing or corrupt

2. Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.

3. I/O Error accessing boot sector file multi(0)disk(0)fdisk(0)\BOOTSECT.DOS

4. Immediate reboot

If you get the immediate reboot or some other weird error, try pressing F8 at the “1st Try This” selection screen, it will give you a prompt where you can select Safe Mode, and then try the “1st Try This” option again. Safe Mode is a special “minimal” version of Windows that doesn’t load certain parts of the operating system that might have caused the problem.

One of the choices should eventually boot you back into Windows.
If you got back into Windows, stop whatever you are doing and backup your most important information from this computer.

Now that you are done backing up the most important info, try to change back whatever you were last doing and boot normally, it that doesn’t work, put the floppy back into the broken computer and double click the fixntldr.bat file on the floppy drive, if it asks you to overwrite a file, just type in y for yes (the file copies boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com from the floppy to the C:\ drive and removes the read only attributes). That process take a few minutes, then remove the floppy and reboot.

If you are using the cd or usb solution, copy the boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com files to My Computer > Local Disk C:\ > and overwite whatever files might be there, then right click each file, choose properties, uncheck the Read Only attribute, and click OK.

If you get back into Windows again, you can change that “1st Try This” menu by going into Start > Control Panel > System > Advanced tab > Startup and Recovery section, Settings button > System Startup; then change the “Default Operating System:” to the selection that worked for you, and change the box that says “Time to display list of operating systems” to however many seconds you want (usually 1 second). Click OK twice.

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