Missing NTLDR in Windows 2003

sheep67 · 06-04-2009, 12:22 PM

We have a Dell 1800 with Windows 2003 serving as DC and Exchange 2003 running on 700 GB RAID 5 Dell Cerc SATA 1.5/6 Ch. It had an issue with the Exchange 2003 database whereas we had to perform restore from our Symantec Backup Exec. We rebooted the server but we are getting

ntldr is missing press
ctrl+alt+del to restart and the server now cannot boot normally.

We followed the instruction on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816793 already but it didn't resolve our issue.

We ran chkdsk /r command and there were no errors.

But when we ran bootcfg /scan command and we are getting Failed to successfully scan disks for Windows installations error.

We appreciate any suggestions.

sheep67 · 06-07-2009, 04:41 AM

We used DaRT 5.0 to boot and this is where we discovered that our system boot letter drive was different than it was displayed in system recovery console. In DaRT 5.0 console, our system boot drive somehow was showing as E: drive instead of C: drive.

Drive letter C: was showing as our Exchange database partition. Meanwhile, our data partition was also showing incorrect drive letter (D: drive).

To change the drive letter for the system boot, we launched ERD Registry Editor and modify the following entry,

1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
2. Right click \DosDevices\C:, and then click Rename
3. Rename it to an unused drive letter "\DosDevices\Z:"
4. Right click \DosDevices\D:, and then click Rename.
5. Rename it to the appropriate system boot drive letter "\DosDevices\C:"
6. Click the value for \DosDevices\Z:, click Rename, and then name it back to "\DosDevices\D:"

To change our data partition letter drive, we used diskpart command.

1. Launch command prompt
2. Type diskpart
3. Type List Volume, this will display all the volume and partition
4. Type Select Volume (number), on our case it was number 4
5. Type Remove Letter=(letter drive), on our case it was F
6. Type Assign Letter=(letter drive), on our case it was E
7. Exit

We rebooted our server and this time we got to boot menu but we received a different error, Load needed DLL's for HAL. At this point, we realized that our server was patched with SP2 and our initial troubleshooting with recovery console was using Windows 2003 with SP1 CD. Yes, we should have installed recovery console during initial installation.

We slipstreamed SP2 to our Windows 2003 installation CD and proceeded with recovery console again. After we copied ntldr, ntdetect.com, and run bootcfg /rebuild like we previously did, we proceeded with the following:

1. Expand F:\i386\hal.dl_ C:\windows\system32\hal.dll
2. Exit and reboot

That was it and it fixed our issue. Now we just have to find why restoring our Exchange database using Symantec Backup Exec caused all this problem...

06-04-2009, 12:22 PM	#1 (permalink)
sheep67 Registered User Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 19 OS: Vista 64 Ultimate SP2	Missing NTLDR in Windows 2003 We have a Dell 1800 with Windows 2003 serving as DC and Exchange 2003 running on 700 GB RAID 5 Dell Cerc SATA 1.5/6 Ch. It had an issue with the Exchange 2003 database whereas we had to perform restore from our Symantec Backup Exec. We rebooted the server but we are getting ntldr is missing press ctrl+alt+del to restart and the server now cannot boot normally. We followed the instruction on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816793 already but it didn't resolve our issue. We ran chkdsk /r command and there were no errors. But when we ran bootcfg /scan command and we are getting Failed to successfully scan disks for Windows installations error. We appreciate any suggestions.

06-07-2009, 04:41 AM	#2 (permalink)
sheep67 Registered User Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 19 OS: Vista 64 Ultimate SP2	[Solved] Missing NTLDR in Windows 2003 We used DaRT 5.0 to boot and this is where we discovered that our system boot letter drive was different than it was displayed in system recovery console. In DaRT 5.0 console, our system boot drive somehow was showing as E: drive instead of C: drive. Drive letter C: was showing as our Exchange database partition. Meanwhile, our data partition was also showing incorrect drive letter (D: drive). To change the drive letter for the system boot, we launched ERD Registry Editor and modify the following entry, 1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices 2. Right click \DosDevices\C:, and then click Rename 3. Rename it to an unused drive letter "\DosDevices\Z:" 4. Right click \DosDevices\D:, and then click Rename. 5. Rename it to the appropriate system boot drive letter "\DosDevices\C:" 6. Click the value for \DosDevices\Z:, click Rename, and then name it back to "\DosDevices\D:" To change our data partition letter drive, we used diskpart command. 1. Launch command prompt 2. Type diskpart 3. Type List Volume, this will display all the volume and partition 4. Type Select Volume (number), on our case it was number 4 5. Type Remove Letter=(letter drive), on our case it was F 6. Type Assign Letter=(letter drive), on our case it was E 7. Exit We rebooted our server and this time we got to boot menu but we received a different error, Load needed DLL's for HAL. At this point, we realized that our server was patched with SP2 and our initial troubleshooting with recovery console was using Windows 2003 with SP1 CD. Yes, we should have installed recovery console during initial installation. We slipstreamed SP2 to our Windows 2003 installation CD and proceeded with recovery console again. After we copied ntldr, ntdetect.com, and run bootcfg /rebuild like we previously did, we proceeded with the following: 1. Expand F:\i386\hal.dl_ C:\windows\system32\hal.dll 2. Exit and reboot That was it and it fixed our issue. Now we just have to find why restoring our Exchange database using Symantec Backup Exec caused all this problem...