OK, so I've done my research on this problem and already found suggestions for fixing this problem throughout the forum which I will try after I get home from work when I have more time, but what I want to start of asking is if anybody can tell me WHY this happens and is there anything I can do to prevent it? My last HDD was about a yr old when I had to replace it with this one because the MBR was corrupt. I noticed that MAY be one of the causes of this error message also, but I've only had this HDD 3 MOs!! I run a very clean system with ZoneAlarm, AVG, SpywareGuard & Blaster, WinPatrol, NoAds, Spybot, & Ad-Aware so I'm just gonna go ahead and rule out any kind of virus even though I know its still possible just highly improbable, and as I said the HDD is only 3 mos so its should be working fine still. Even if its NOT a boot sector or MBR lots of posts seem to indicate the computer is looking in the wrong place for the needed file, but why would it do that? I haven't made any changes. I used the computer yesterday; turned it off; turned it back on; error. Hopefully this drive can be saved (or at least I can pull off my data like I was able to for the last one), but I'd love if it anybody can tell me how to stop this BEFORE it happens for the future. Thanks
My suggestion is to not run so many spyware, virus scan programs. My personal experience is that when you have two or three of the same type programs running, all they do is fight each other. They don't play nice. I suspect that is what has happened with yours. I recommend using AVG, Windows Defender, and Windows firewall. That is all you need. I have a son who gets on all the crazy websites and I have never had any problems by running these programs. Now they are my personal opinion favorites and others will try to blast me for using these, but they work. You can substitute for any of them as you see fit, but I would run only one program for each, virus scan,firewall, and spyware. Good Luck!
They definitely can conflict but the only problems (so far as i know) arise when you have more than one active program and I do only have one of each of those. the only things I have duplicates of are ad/spy scanners and I keep them both just because for some reason they each detect something the other doesn't. I aldo tend to think that shouldn't be the problem because I ran the same setup on my old PC (which never broke just became un-upgradeable)as well as on my laptop since 2004 without a hiccup. thanks for the suggestion though.
The only time I've seen NTLDR problems are in dual boot system's. Is your computer setup with more than one operating system or has some sort of program that modify's the MBR like a boot manager or "norton goback"? If you have a single operationg system and no programs that modify the MBR, my advice is to run a checkdisk/f on the drive. If this problem happened suddenly it could have been caused by an improper shutdown that corrupted some system files. A checkdisk/f can sometimes fix that. http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm
No...its a single boot. I guess I'll start going through these troubleshooting steps 1 by 1 and report back
the windows firewall is at the bottom of the list for firewalls. the hd is most likely still good, just that the os is corrupted. copy i386\ntldr to c:\ & i386\ntdetect.com to c:\
I hope that's the case. So far things are looking a little better than last time when it WAS my HDD because I was able to boot with my XP CD (last time I got no response). I stopped short of running the repair op because I wanted to back up my data in case it ended up coming down to overwriting everything; so I stuck my HDD into and enclosure and pulled everything important onto my laptop (which took most of last night). I also went ahead and ran error-checking with auto-fix & attempt to recover. It went through all 5 phases but didn't give me any kind of report at the end so I don't know if it fixed anything or not. there are so many options for this I wasn't sure which way to go next and was wondering since I had it in the enclosure if I should try to mess with the boot.ini or if I can drag/drop the ntldr files that need replacing from the lap onto the HDD or if I just need to hook it back into the PC and use the XP Cd for that.
hrm...well here's what I've got so far... I put the HDD back in my PC & copied i386\ntldr to c:\ & i386\ntdetect.com to c:\. Rebooted but still got the error. Went back into recovery console and tried to run chkdsk, but it said drive "seemed" to be in good condition and was not checked. used chkdsk /p to force a check and of course it found errors. Tried to run chkdsk /f after that but it kept telling me it was an invalid parameter and after I ran chkdsk /? it only gave me /p (which I already did) & /r as extension options. So I ran /r as its pretty similar to /f...or rather I TRIED to run it...Got up to some where in 70s% complete and then rest to 50%. I let it just keep running and when it did the same thing again I ended the process. Guess I'll try running fixboot & fixmbr tomorrow, but for now I'm going to bed. Any other suggestions greatly appreciated.
Aha! It appears the problem is once again a corrupt MBR. I got on this morning, went int to the recovery console and typed "fixboot." It asked me if I was sure I wanted to write a new bootsector and not being entirely sure what this would entail in terms or data loss I put N. Then I tried this same thing with "fixmbr" and got the following msg: **CAUTION** This computer appears to have a noin-standard or invalid MBR. FIXMBR may damage your partition tables if you proceed. This could cause all the partitions on your current HDD to become inaccessible. If you are not having problems accessing your drive do not continue. Are you sure you want to write a new MBR? Again for the time being I hit N. I mean I AM having trouble accessing my drive and if this messed things up even more I'd just go to the step I'd be using if this just didn't fix the problem which would be reformatting &/or buying a new HDD. I just wanted to get some opinions as to whether there is some other option I missed I should try first. I read some about checking the boot.ini file, but I wasn't sure if you could do that without first being able to boot into windows. I can acces my drive on another PC as an USB external storage device, but I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get into the file that way or not.
I would try going here I'm pretty sure its not your hardrive try all the step they suggest. Let us know how it goes.
the demo of "paragon justboot corrector" can read your boot.ini file on a non-booting hard drive, it won't let you modify it, but you can check it to see if that's your problem. The only problem the demo is 2 years old and doesn't bootup all of the latest computers, but you can give it a try. When you download it, burn it to a cd, then use the cd to bootup your computer. The latest version of the boot corrector that works on the newest computers is in "paragon partition manager version 9.0" , but it doesn't have a demo. demo here http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/downloads/JustBoot_Boot_Corrector_38938_p/ free hard drive repair/recovery software http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk Though the fixmbr/fixboot commands look dangerous, the times I've used them, it didn't make my hard drive any worst than it was. The fixmbr/fixboot commands won't repair a boot.ini or drive letter problem also if the system partition is corrupted the fixmbr/fixboot won't fix that. Even if fixmbr/fixboot doesn't fix your problem, it won't damage your system partition, you can continue doing other repairs. The only thing that will damage your hard drive to where the data is unrecoverable is a reformat, anything else can be fixed.
No good news here...poopy... I went through all 10 options on tiny empire (using bootable CD option) in regular & safe mode with no luck =( The only thing that happened like it said on the site was that at some point I got every one of the 4 error possibilities. From there I followed their link to 5starsupport and went through the recovery console steps listed since they did a few things i hadn't tried before...still nothing. Then I went to the techspot link and d/led the Western Digital (my HDD manufacturer) diagnostic software made a bottdisk and ran it, but it detetcted no problems. After that I ran chkdsk again in the recovery console...no errors. Then I ran chkdsk /r. ACtually got it to complete this time and there was no msg at the end. Doesn't say if it fixed anything or if there was anything it couldn't fix...nothing. But of course my computer still won't boot. =( I tried justboot, but it gave me a screen that said stubs library not initialized (or something to that effect) then went to a dos prompt screen Z:\Dos\BIN (could be inverting the dos & bin). If anyone knows the syntax commands or can refer me to a page I'm not really sure what to do in there. I hopped into this site http://icrontic.com/articles/repair_windows_xp from somewhere as typing this. Think I'll try that next...after that seems like my next best bets vare FIXMBR & then a restore unless I can figure out Justboot (although the site I refered seems to take care of boot.ini)or someone has another suggestion. Thanks for all the help so far or I wouldn't have been able to do this much.
