"HTLDR is missing".........??????

[ntel]

Hope you chaps can help me out here. The wife recently took a few applications off one of our old "e-machines" computers and now, when we switch it on, the message "HTLDR is missing" appears on the screen and nothing else happens. It seems that an important file may have been deleted stopping the computer from booting up.

Any ideas on how to fix this. By the way, I'm a complete computer numpty.

[malman]

Make sure you don't have a floppy disk in the drive as this will give you and NTLDR message on boot.

What Operating system was it windows2000 or XP?

Did she used add remove programs to remove the apps or just delete the files?

[BliarOut]

Is it XP or W2K?

The easiest solution is to stick the CD in the PC, boot from it and go for the repair option (for a numpty type repair). NTLDR is a key file but it's not always/usually missing. That is a very broad error message that could hide any number of sins.

[GreenV8S]

This has been covered in some detail in the past, do a search here for NTLDR. There's a problem with the filesystem which can cause this. Fortunately it's usually repairable.

Edited by GreenV8S on Thursday 17th August 13:05

[ntel]

Thanks for your answers. I've tried the repair option when booting from the cd but I get stuck when it asks for an administators password. It wouldn't matter if all the existing settings or the my documents file was lost, so could I solve the problem by reinstalling windows?