NTLDR is compressed, Windows won't load, BUT.....

H

hollow ropes

Geek Trainee
I have a Gateway machine with Windows XP Media Center Edition pre-loaded on it and I have no Windows XP CD. What can I do?
 
Welcome to HWF :)

You need to get into the recovery console. If you have an installation disc of Windows XP, insert it and start the computer from the CD. At a certain point you can choose between the following options:

- Press ENTER to install XP
- Press R to load the recovery console
- Press F3 to exit Setup.

At this screen, press the R key.

The recovery console should appear. If it asks for an administrator password, then enter your password.

Now enter these commands. Press ENTER\RETURN after every line
Code: 
CD \ 
ATTRIB -C NTLDR

If you don't see any error messages, you can reboot your computer.
 
Thanks a lot for the reply. I tried to boot the computer from the a Windows XP disc, but for some reason it's giving me an error about "ATAPI incompatible." What does that mean, and how do I get around that? Thanks in advance.
 
Okay, I got past the ATAPI problem, now I've run into another problem. I went ahead and used the built-in System Restore that was pre-installed on the Gateway computer restore Windows (with a backup). Thing is, once it goes through the restoring process, I get the same NTLDR message. If everything got overwritten, why would that file still be compressed? It seems like I'm going in circles with this problem, and it's gotten me really confused. Any ideas?
 
You could always reformat and do a clean install of windows. That should fix your problem, although it is more of a last resort type of thing.
 
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