Hello Davey,

One of my hard drives has crashed.
O/S is XP Pro.

Will not boot at all.
Gives me error message 'NTLDR' is missing.
So I have copied NTLDR from another PC running the same O/S and transferred it to the Windows system folder and the system32 folder (did both because I do not know which one it's missing from) but will still not boot.

Can you advise please?

if you have more then one hard drive in the system or a dual boot system with two or more o/s make sure the bios is booting from the correct drive.
some modem bios will auto look at all the hard drives in order to try and boot if it can't start windows from the listed drive, then it will auto change its self if you not careful giving you that error message.

if all is correct follow the m/s way to correct the error.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320397

Hi Davey,

Will file your advice for future reference.

I have now placed the offending hard drive into another pc and it is now a single drive but it still puts up 'NTLDR' is missing!!

Any other suggestions??

reinstall windows if the drive is being stubbon.

you can try the second repair option in windows xp.
IE when the xp install first offers you to repair you carry on as you would do for a normal clean install.
the second time it offers you can go ahead with that repair and choose to keep your files and folders.

sometimes windows still blanks programs out and may loose some files if it thinks they are not needed, but most of the files it will save in a folder for you to access.


of corse all this may be in vain if the hard drive boot section is damaged, if possible scan the hard drive in another pc and check it for disk errors before you try the repair option.