[thelist] HELP!!! NTLDR is missing.... SYS CRASH

[Seth Bienek]

Hey Sean,

I've seen this happen a couple of times.. Enough to warrant putting the answer in a tip, anyways.. And I don't think it's off-topic at all.. Of course, tips are ALWAYS welcome.. :)

<tip type="hosed boot sector">
> I'm on an auxillary system.  I was running a win98... and it locked up on me.  
> I rebooted and it gave me 'NTLDR is missing' error.
>
> What can I do?  Why did this happen?

What's happened is that the boot sector of your system drive is apparently corrupt.  You can fix it without damaging the existing data on your computer fairly easily, if you have a "Windows 98 Boot Disk".  You DO have a working "Windows 98 Boot Disk", don't you?  If you do, then skip ahead to "Part II".  If not, then you'll need to get yourself over to a working windows 98 computer.

You can replace your currently hosed bootsector with a one by cruising over to a friend's house who is running Windows98 as well.  Take a floppy.

PART I
---------
Get to a DOS prompt on your friend's PC. 
  (click Start, Run, and type COMMAND)
Format the floppy and make it bootable. 
  (type: 'format a: /s' without the quotes)
Copy sys.com off your friend's computer onto the floppy. 
  (type: 'copy c:\windows\command\sys.com a:')

Now go home.

PART II
---------
Put the floppy in your drive, and boot up to it.
When the command prompt comes up, sys the hard drive.
  (type: 'a:\sys.com c:')

Pop the floppy disk out of the drive, and reboot.  You should be good to go!

Good Luck and Best Wishes!

</tip>

Seth