I have recently put a 80 gb hard drive with windows XP installed on it into a computer that used to run windows 2000 and the old hard drive had windows 2000 installed. I turn the computer on and I get the message: NTLDR is missing. Any suggestions anybody?
2006-07-24 00:41:11 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Other - Computers
does this have anything to do with BIOS?
2006-07-24 01:03:22 · update #1
I am not 100% sure - but, I think I erased all data off that drive when I put it into the new machine.
2006-07-24 01:47:36 · update #2
You cant just move a hard drive that has Windows XP and assume that it will load windows once you startup. You need to resintall Windows on your new computer and partition the hard drive again. You need the Windows XP CD, then just pop it in and then boot up the CD drive first. It will take you to setup. Reformat and reinstall Windows XP and you should be fine.
Edit: It might have something to do with your BIOS. When you install an OS into your computer it does a lot of configurations. When you install Windows, it does update your BIOS. A hard drive is not like a RAM where you can just install it and then it will work. You have to install it and then do a reinstall of Windows to make your Windows work correctly. Some of your files might have been corrupted during the move and your BIOS might be rejecting your new hard drive because its different from the one you just had before. When you do a completely new reinstall, you wont have any problems so I think you need to reinstall Windows XP. Even if you fix the NTLDR part, you will find more problems later.
2006-07-24 00:46:01 · answer #1 · answered by Sean I.T ? 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
The other answers are correct about not being able to move an XP installation to another computer, it simply won't work well. In your extra details you mentioned erasing the drive, are you adding the 80 gig drive as a second drive or replacing the old drive with 2000 on it? If you're adding it as a second drive make sure the drive jumpers are configured correctly. If you installed the drive on the same channel as your existing boot drive then you need to be sure your boot drive is set as master and the new drive as slave. Older hard drives, especially Western Digital, are very picky about the jumper settings, cable select doesn't always work.
It might also be a BIOS issue depending on how old the computer is. Older machines have size limitations when it comes to hard drives and if this machine is very old it may not be able to handle an 80 gig drive unless you update the BIOS or add a new PCI drive controller.
2006-07-26 08:14:43 · answer #2 · answered by ? 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It means that the computer is not finding the file NTLDR, which is the file that actually loads Windows XP.
First check that you do not have a floppy disk or CD disk in one of your drives. If it is looking there first and not finding Windows XP on the floppy or CD, you will get that error.
Has the 80 gb XP drive ever booted? If not, you may not have it installed as the first harddrive in the computer, so it is not seeing that hard drive as the one to boot from.
If it has worked, and suddenly stopped, then something has happened that corrupted the Windows files on the drive. You may be able to correct the issue by reinstalling Windows XP on the hard drive.
2006-07-24 07:49:21 · answer #3 · answered by dewcoons 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Windows XP refuse to run only on same computer that is installed on.
Means that you can not install WindowsXP on hard drive on computer A then move the hard drive into computer B and expect it to run ok.
This is because of copy right issues.
What you need is to install WindowsXP on hard drive with the same mainboard, and PCI cards you want to run on.
you can not move the hard drive with WinXP on another computer and expect to run.
sorry!
2006-07-24 08:36:02 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋