Please help me save my files in Windows XP!

Stavros

Stavros

Geek Trainee
Ok so here's the deal. Unfortunately this is one of those completely random problems that cascades out of control and gives you absolutely no clue as to what is happening. I was replacing an IDE cable for my CD and DVD/RW drives and for some reason after the replacement I could not successfully boot Windows Xp Pro.

It would halt at the error - DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

I quickly realized that for whatever reason it will still boot fine so long as the windows xp cd is in the drive and I have my boot order set to check if the CD is bootable. After the press any key to boot from cd option goes by the system booted normally

However I of course was not satisfied and attempted to do a repair of the XP installation. The repair installation stalled twice on the installing drivers portion of the install and after I rebooted the second time, it will no longer even try to repair. If I attempt to boot it will show the blue background with the message setup is restarting, before freezing at a black screen with only the mouse cursor showing.

After this I decided I would save my files from the drive and format and start with a clean slate. Since I couldn't log into windows, I made a quick format of my 15 GB hard drive and installed a copy of XP on that

I was able to boot in and acess my files, however I have a large number of media files and other large data files and so had to find room for roughly 80GB of files. My computer has a 250GB primary drive, and 80GB and 15GB backup drives. I needed the 80GB drive to be completely clear in order to take the bulk of my backup files with a small smattering going to the 15GB.

However I was unable to format the C drive within XP and even after deleting everything I could see including hidden files and folders from the drive using Explorer it still did not have enough free space.

I then rebooted and using the Recovery console performed a format of the 80gb drive. However after rebooting from that, I cannot boot any longer as the bootup now halts on:

NTLDR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

I tried restoring ntldr and ntdetect.com files from my XP cd to both of the drives with a windows installation to no avail!

So this has become the most DIABOLICALLY EVIL set of problems I've ever encountered and I am at my wit's end.

If anyone can give me any sort of advice you will be my hero and I will be eternally greatful!!!

Thanks for reading my essay,
Shane
 
1. Have you got any other Operating System's Disc? like Linux or whateva? Try that...

2. Make sure that jumpers are correct and the new IDE cable which you have plugged in is actually working also..

3. Out of three, remove those HDD's which has got important data in it and go ahead with only one drive, which you wants to use for windows.
 
Unfortunately I do not have any other OS cds at the moment. I could probably ask around for one if this doesn't work.

As far as I can tell the new IDE cable appears to be working fine, both drives show up in the device list and I've been using the DVD drive with no problems installing XP or using the recovery tool. The jumpers are set correctly as well.

Ok, the drive with important files (the 250GB) and the 15GB are out, so I just have a cleanly formatted 80GB in
 
NTLDR is missing
Press any key to restart

For support on this error, you can check [link=http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314057/EN-US/]Microsoft's Support Centre[/link]
 
Thanks for the link! That worked I was able to boot into Windows. I plugged back in my 250GB drive and I'm currently copying all the important files off... Once that's done I'll just reformat the 250GB install XP on it and I should be good to go! Thanks very much for the help!
 
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