[ZionGP]

Ok, I know this is an old problem, with old answers, and I promise, I've spent hours reading threads with the same suggestions over and over before posting this.

I've been running XP Home with SP2 happily for about six months. Two nights ago, while working on a paper for one of my grad-classes, the thing froze up completely. I did a hard restart and got the all too familiar "NTLDR is missing Press any key to restart."

I've booted into the recovery console, and at this point, I've copied NTLDR and NTDETECT from the i386 file to every drive on my computer (2hdd's, one of which is partitioned into two, making 3) This has not solved my problem.

Microsoft, as many of you know, claims that SP2 fixes this problem (but I have SP2, always have), and they also claim that "bcupdate" will fix it. I've been able to download bcupdate but cannot get it to execute. I don't know if it will fix my problem anyway, since it's for pre-SP2 OS's.

I'm starting to run out of options, and not happy about it. Certain, recent, files that haven't been backed up are on the HD, as well as drivers for peripherals that cannot be located anywhere else. I don't want to have to reformat this thing again!

:4-dontkno Does anybody out there have directions for executing the bcupdate, or any other advice that might fix this problem? :4-dontkno

Thanks so much. In the mean time, I'm keeping a close eye on my laptop (which I'm using now). If it goes down, I'm shot.

 

[PurpleSky]

You can try installing this HD to a different computer as slave and save the data. I would try to do a repair installation. This should be a good guide.

 

[ZionGP]

Repair Install

Maybe I'm asking a stupid question here, but how do you do a "repair" install? AND Does a repair install overwrite drivers, etc? Thanks.

 

[ZionGP]

By the way, I have no access to another computer that I could slave the HD to, otherwise, I would be much less worried.

Thanks again for the help

 

[PurpleSky]

Repair installation will not format your drive so you ll keep all data including your drivers. No worries. ( life is a risk

 

[ZionGP]

Thanks purple sky. I'm assuming you just boot off the XP disk and enter setup, and repair setup is an option? I'll give it a shot tonight, if it works, I'll post it here, if it doesn't work I'll be back with more questions.

Thanks again!