ERROR MESSAGE NTLDR press cntrl alt del

My daughter used an external hard drive on my dell desktop computer the other day to save some of her pictures and some music. We run windows XP. The computer worked fine until I turned it off. Now when I turn it on, I get a message that reads "NTLDR is missing, press cntrl alt del". When I press that, the same message comes back again. I tried pressing f8 when starting, but that did not work. I can press f12 and get some information, but I am not quite sure what to do next. Please help as we have so much information stored on that computer. It is a very good computer and I really do not want to make a clean install on it. THank you so much for your help.

Responses(5)

shesagordie

10 Elder

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46K Posts

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January 16th, 2008 02:00

LuvYaAl

For the NTLDR is missing error.
Check out the following procedures here and here.

The above should work, if not, then run diagnostic's extended test on the hard drive and prepare for a clean reinstall of XP.

Bev.

===================================================
Please don't send me questions about your system by DCF Messenger.
Post the issue in the appropriate Board, where they will be answered.

LuvYaAl

16 Posts

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January 18th, 2008 01:00

Thank you very much for answering my question regarding the error message I am getting on my computer. I can not get any further than the error message above. Do you think it is possible that if I connect that external hard drive to the computer again, windows will boot from that since I believe when my daughter used the external hard drive on the computer the first time, it might have taken something out of the computer that the computer needs to boot from? Just a thought. Thank you once again for your help. I hope I can resolve this situation.

shesagordie

10 Elder

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46K Posts

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January 18th, 2008 02:00

LuvYaAl

Not knowing your computer model, but I doubt that you can use an external hard drive to boot the system.

Bev.

===================================================
Please don't send me questions about your system by DCF Messenger.
Post the issue in the appropriate Board, where they will be answered.

LuvYaAl

16 Posts

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January 18th, 2008 17:00

Thank you once again for your help. I think I will try to connect that external hard drive when my daughter sends it back to me from school just to see what will happen. I think that hard drive may have something on it that will boot that computer (a dell desktop) since she told me she sees files on that external hard drive that she does not know what they are --- I think they are files for booting my dell computer that got put on that external hard drive when she was taking out her pictures and files. I see in some of the information you sent to me that the computer may think it still has a memory stick in it and that is why it will not boot up. So maybe I can "trick" my computer into thinking that it has it's bootable stuff with the external hard drive connected. I sure hope so. This is so crazy and unfortunate.

Thank you again!

Lorraine

LuvYaAl

16 Posts

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January 21st, 2008 03:00

Hi again. Is the root directory c:WINDOWS ? Cause that is what it is showing me. then I just type the word copy then a space and then the rest of that stuff after that? and my disk only works in the DVD drive of my dell 4700 desktop computer. what letter would that be - the instructions suggested that it is an e: . I think I am almost there. and thanks again for your help. I had a lot of trouble with the administrative password --- but one time I just hit enter when it kept asking for the word and then it just went to a prompt C:Windows> I hope this is where I should be typing in all the rest of that stuff. Thank you.

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ERROR MESSAGE NTLDR press cntrl alt del