ok, i have a sony vaio pcg-sr7k (no internal floppy or cd-drive, only external usb ones). had win2k on there when i bought it used w/ tons of viruses. i decided to format instead of messing w/ each virus. b/c the drives were all USB, i coulnd't format using fdisk and reinstall the OS w/ the way it was set up. so i removed the HD, installed it into my amada 1700, formatted the HD and then installed win2k. then i put it back into the sony only to get the error msg: NTLDR is missing.
here's what i've tried so far...
on another forum, someone suggested putting the hd in my other lappy, copying over the i386 folder, putting the hd back into the sony, then running winnt.exe to begin the install. didn't like that either. same msg about ntldr missing after the first restart.
someone suggested i instal win98se on there w/ the hd on the other lappy. i did that and i was able then able to boot to win98se on the SONY. i still couldn't get the lappy to see my usb cdrom, though. i had to move the hd back into my other lappy, copy over the install files for win2k, then reboot the hd in the sony and run the win2k update from the hd. started out fine. before it restarted (after it copied over the files or whatever it does the first time around), i checked to make sure the ntldr and ntdetect.com files were in the root. they were. so, i let it restart and guess what... same thing again.
i checked out this site: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm
it sd something about trying to boot to an unbootable source (maybe since there is no floppy or cd to boot to??). could it be that since there's no internal cd/floppy, it's causing this error? don't know why it won't see my usb cdrom. i know the usb was functional before the install. also, the usb cdrom can be seen in my other lappy. would a pcmcia cdrom be seen?
this has me very frustrated. i thinking of going to an actual pc tech and have them take care of it. hate to do that though...
any other ideas, guys?
here's what i've tried so far...
on another forum, someone suggested putting the hd in my other lappy, copying over the i386 folder, putting the hd back into the sony, then running winnt.exe to begin the install. didn't like that either. same msg about ntldr missing after the first restart.
someone suggested i instal win98se on there w/ the hd on the other lappy. i did that and i was able then able to boot to win98se on the SONY. i still couldn't get the lappy to see my usb cdrom, though. i had to move the hd back into my other lappy, copy over the install files for win2k, then reboot the hd in the sony and run the win2k update from the hd. started out fine. before it restarted (after it copied over the files or whatever it does the first time around), i checked to make sure the ntldr and ntdetect.com files were in the root. they were. so, i let it restart and guess what... same thing again.
i checked out this site: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm
it sd something about trying to boot to an unbootable source (maybe since there is no floppy or cd to boot to??). could it be that since there's no internal cd/floppy, it's causing this error? don't know why it won't see my usb cdrom. i know the usb was functional before the install. also, the usb cdrom can be seen in my other lappy. would a pcmcia cdrom be seen?
this has me very frustrated. i thinking of going to an actual pc tech and have them take care of it. hate to do that though...
any other ideas, guys?