NTLDR is missing.. help! :)

[Suprnova04]

recently my computer froze up pretty badly and i couldn't do anything but a dirty shutdown, and when i booted it back up i'm getting:
"NTLDR is missing
Press any key to restart "

I tried going into recovery console, and when it gave me options of what install of windows to log into, i was expecting the choice to be "C:\windows" but it was "D:\windows" which is my cd drive. Is that normal? Anyways i tried using the following commands
COPY D:\i386\NTLDR C\:
COPY D:\i386\NTDETECT.COM C:\
but it said "access is denied" and i couldn't do anything. Is my C:\ drive not being recognized? Anyone know what i should do?

Thanks,
Dan

[MajorDomo]

First things first, check to see if you have a floppy inserted into the FDD. Most common cause.

[Suprnova04]

yeah.. i know... :P
no floppy drive for me

[boasist]

boot off of your windows install cd and do either one of the following.

run the windows repair, this will take it back and replace these files, although you'll have to run windows update again as it changes all files back to the cd state.


or run the recovery console, and copy the files from the cd to the HDD via DOS.

[BigJavy]

I kinda have a bad feeling about your hard drive. If you go into your bios, is your hard drive listed as one of the ide devices?


jason


or maybe it's just early and i don't know what i'm talking about... getting outta bed before 10am doesn't suit me well

[Suprnova04]

haha.. yeah i hear you on the early thing...

yeah it is listed, so it's at least being detected to some extent..

[zeplar]

As a fallback, could try booting to Windows PE or BartPE, or moving the drive to a different computer.

Or maybe the drive failed, detected but not accessible. Could check out the manufacturer's diagnostic boot disk.

[cyr0n_k0r]

run chkdsk

that solves those problems usually.

[Thunder]

I had the EXACT same issue today. I ran recovery console, and ran the following:
>D:\
>CD i386
>copy NTLDR c:\

and that worked for me 100%
EDIT: pretty much exactly what you did. At first I accidently hit enter with copy ntldr and god access denied (i forgot to put location)