How To: Fix "NTLDR is missing"

Applies to: Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP

Symptoms

When you start your computer, you receive the error message "NTLDR is missing. Press any key to restart."

Cause

The error message "NTLDR is missing" means that the Windows boot loader (NT Loader, NTLDR) cannot be found. This often occurs when the computer tries to boot from a drive other than the one Windows is installed on, due to a change in the drive configuration or because you left a bootable disk in a removable drive. But it may also be because the NTLDR file has been corrupted or deleted.

Solution

Check the boot drives

First, check the boot drives to make sure that the computer is not trying to boot from a different drive to the one that contains Windows.

  • Check that there are no CDs or DVDs in the CD/DVD drives.
  • Check that no removable drives are plugged in to the USB ports.
  • Check the boot order in the BIOS Setup to ensure that the computer boots from the drive containing Windows before any other bootable devices.

If this does not resolve the problem, you will have to repair the NT boot loader.

Fix NTLDR

The easiest way to fix the "NTLDR is missing" error is to use Spotmau PowerSuite. However, if your computer is using Windows XP and you have a Windows XP installation CD you may be able to boot from this and use the Recovery Console to fix NTLDR manually instead.

  • Insert the Spotmau PowerSuite CD and start the computer. The main menu will appear.
Spotmau PowerSuite
  • Click 2. Windows Recovery.
Spotmau PowerSuite
  • When the Windows Recovery tool starts, click Windows NT/2000/XP/2003.
Spotmau PowerSuite
  • On the Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 Recovery dialog, click Recover NTLDR and NTDETECT.
Spotmau PowerSuite
  • On the Recover NTLDR and NTDETECT dialog, select your operating system (e.g. Windows XP) and then click Recover.
Spotmau PowerSuite

The tool will repair the file and report "NTLDR and NTDETECT have been recovered successfully."

  • Remove the Spotmau PowerTools CD from the drive and click Restart to reboot the computer.

Using the Windows Recovery Console

The Windows 2000 and Windows XP CDs supplied by Microsoft has a tool called the Recovery Console which can be used to repair errors that prevent Windows XP from starting using the command line. OEM versions of Windows XP, including computers that were supplied with Windows XP preinstalled, may not have this utility.

  • Insert the Windows CD and start the computer.
  • When the Welcome to Setup screen appears, press R.
  • Type a number corresponding to the Windows installation you wish to repair (usually 1) and press Enter.
  • When prompted, type the administrator password and press Enter.
  • From the command prompt, copy NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM from the i386 folder of the CD to the root folder of the hard drive. In the example commands given below, C: is the hard drive and D: is the CD-ROM drive. You will need to change the drive letters if appropriate:
    COPY D:\I386\NTLDR C:\
    COPY D:\I386\NTDETECT.COM C:\
  • Remove the Windows XP CD from the drive and restart the computer.

Last week Microsoft announced that MSE 2.0 was available for public beta testing. The cool thing is the new version of MSE installs on Windows Home Server. Here we’ll take a look at running it on WHS “Vail”.

Last week we showed you a screenshot tour of the new Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 Beta running on Windows 7 and the current version of Windows Home Server. Since the current version of Windows Home Server is built on Server 2003, it doesn’t support the new feature of Network Protection. The feature is available in WHS Vail though, as it is built on top of Server 2008 R2. Let’s take a look at installing and running it on WHS Vail.

MSE 2.0 Beta on Vail

First put the MSE 64-bit install package into one of your Vail Server Shared Folders. You will need to use the 64-bit version because that is the only version Vail comes on.

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Now on a computer connected to your network Remote Desktop into Vail and install MSE 2.0.

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Run through the install wizard just like you would if you were installing it on a Windows computer.

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It also includes Windows Firewall Integration so you’ll want to decide if you want to enable it or not.

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A restart of the server will be required.

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After the server restarts, remote back into it and you’ll see that MSE 2.0 is updating its malware definition files.

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After that it will kick off the first Quick Scan but it can take several minutes to complete.

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After the scan is complete, you can go into Settings \ Real-time Protection and notice the Network protection feature is supported by Vail.

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Like on your desktop, the MSE icon lives in the Taskbar and will run during system startup so you don’t need to install it as a Service.

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We ran a couple test viruses from eicar.com (which is a great way to make sure your Antivirus software is working) on Vail and MSE 2.0 detected and removed them successfully.

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Conclusion

If you have Windows Home Server, either version 1 or are testing the beta code named “Vail”, you’ll be happy to know that MSE 2.0 will work on both versions. Although the Network Protection feature isn’t available on version 1, it’s nice to have a solid, lightweight, and easy to use Antimalware utility to protect your server. In our week of testing it, we had no issues and it seems to be working perfectly. Make sure to check out our screenshot tour of MSE 2.0 where we show it running on Windows 7 and the current version of WHS.

Download MSE 2.0 Beta from Microsoft Connect

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