My Comp Died
 

I recently installed a new burner on my home made somewaht ghetto rigged pc. Well it was all working fine until today. i was playing half life and it froze so i shut down the pc using the button thing and now when i try to get back on it says "ntldr not found" i know it has something to do with slave, master, secondays slave, all that crap but im an idiot and have no idea waht to do. so, before i spend $200+ getting it professionaly fixed does any one have ne ideas?

windows xp pro
geforce 3 ti 200
w/e else u need to know do not hesitate to ask.

well i guess for now im stuck on this 400Mhz piece in my basement....

That error message means that the OS isn't loaded correctly. The easiest fix would be to reinstall Windows. Or you might could even just use the Win XP cd to do a repair of the install.

That happens at my school when there is a disc in the floppy drive.

im currently trying to reformat. the options were quick reformat or regular. i did quick and it didnt work so now im trying to do regular. its been at 0% for 20 mins now. is it supposed to take this long? no theres no disk in the A:. i tryed a repair but it just brought me to a dos screen with some crap on it. well nothing is working :/

Every comp I touch goes slow its a conspiracy.

NTLDR is a file which is supposed to be present in the root directory of the system partition. (Most likely your C:)

The easiest thing you can do is boot the machine using a boot disk (make sure it is a Windows XP disk, nothing else), and then when you have your prompt, enter windows. If this lets you in to windows then the file is definitley corrupt. Do quick check for viruses, then copy the NTLDR file from the disk to the hard drive.

IF you don't have a disk you can try booting off of the WinXP CD, and then try copying NTLDR from the CD to your C:\

Well Sqrl that idea didnt work. im all out of ideas :(

Well, then all you can do is reinstall Windows. =)

Most likely what happened is that damned NTLDR got corrupted when you powered down.

To avoid this in the future, when you do reinstall windows, make yourself a set of rescue disks or whatever fancy thing they call it in Win XP. =)

Is the comp not starting up windows at all or is it just giving you that error?

WinXP can not start without a good copy of NTLDR and NTLDR is the file that launches the OS. It does this by loading it's own file system and reading the BOOT.INI file to see which OS's are available.

Hmm ok reformat it is. I deleted the partition then tryed doing the quick format. It didnt work and said that the drive may not be connected, etc so in other words it wasnt reading it. I tryed doing the normal format and it was at 0% for 2 hours so i figured it wasnt working and turned it off. so is my hard drive shot? should i just buy a new one?

Your ribbon cables may be busted, your motherboard's primary or secondary channels might be broken.. could be anything. Go borrow a friend's drive/cables and see what happens.

How big is your hard drive?

Also, after deleting the partition you made a new one right? (I assume you did, but just in case.)

After creating the new parition you must Reboot. If you don't then the machine doesn't acknowledge it properly.

After rebooting you have to do a normal format. You can never do a quick format on a new partition.

I took my old hard drive out of my other comp and put it in this 1. it got to this dos looking loading screen thing where it checks for viruses and then just froze there. should i try using the ribbons? is the normal format supposed to take 10 years?

Time of format depends on Hard Drive size, which is why I asked.

Also, the ribbons on your HD in your new computer are probably 80 pin cables whereas the ones from the old hard drive your talking about are probably 40 pin cables, so you don't want to try using them with the new hard drive.

Generally speaking if you can partition a drive, the ribbon should be ok. Usually if it's damaged the drive doesn't even show up.

I don't know how the setup for WinXP is, but when installing Win2k you can create and delete partitions at setup and have the setup utility format the drive using the file system of your choice without having to reboot.

Try setting your computer to boot from your CD drive and then put in your WinXP disc, reboot, and run the setup program. Do all your partitioning and stuff right in setup. If you still can't make any headway you are going to be better off taking the machine in to have a tech fix it for you.

my hard drive is 60 gb and the hd out here is 20. so are u sure i couldnt try switching pin cords?

Well, you can try, but if the one with the old hard drive is a 40 pin cable you'll want to go buy a new 80 pin cable. So trying with the old cable just to see if it works shouldn't hurt anything, the hard drive will just run in a slower mode. If the old cable works then go get a 80 pin cable appropriate for your HD speed.

yeah you're not alone man, i had about 63 gigs of movies and when i was downloading another movie it just went to a blue screen and said the hard drive isn't writeable!!! before you know it when i restarted the hard drive it doen't even load up and all that 63 gigs of stuff is gone....i think is was the freakin fan...if is stalls for some reason it has to be the fan

so i went to fry's electronics and bought 400 bucks worth of stuff; 200 dollar case that holds 7 fans and has a fan regulator atthe top and i also bought this d link so i can use my laptop (the one i am using right now) without network cable!! (sucker is even faster than the T! i have at work :-P
and i bout this 120 gig hard drive (maxtor not western digital. i'm not going to mess with that again man!!!) and bought some other nick nacks for my palm. O_o

I had a Western Digital HD go out on me once.... They did replace it though. After three weeks that is :( Those bastards!

Ok heres what happened. I took put the pin cords from this comp and put them in my comp. I started it. at the same part where it would usualy say ntldr not found it now said error loading OS. Hmmm interesting. so i load up my windows disk. delete the partition, restart, do a full reformat. nothin. it stays at 0% for hmm going on 45 mins now. so i took the pin cords from my comp and put them in this one. this comp works fine. plz explain this phenomonom. waht do i do sqrl!!!!!

Buy a new hard drive, I guess you are screwed. When you took out the hard drive, if you opened it up and touched it at all, it'll be shot to hell. I suggest just getting a new one, preferably one of the size you plan on using.

Well I took out this comps ide pins out of my comp and swapped them back to normal and guess what, it says error loading os. same thing it said when i had the pin cords swapped. well no more ntldr message thingy. so wtf do i do now??? new HD??

I wouldn't bother trying anything else, from what I've read I could only recommend a completely new hard drive...
Just to be nice though, I'll condense this, print it out, and give it to my computer architecture teacher.

Thanx a lot man! =D

I would suggest testing out the Hard drive in your other computer. Just to be sure of what is and isn't dead.

Either your Hard Drive is dead, or the IDE Controller on your Motherboard is dead. If the Hard Drive works in your other computer, then you know for sure it's not the motherboard. If it doesn't work, then you know the hard drive is bad, but I would also suggest testing a hard drive you know is good in the computer you pulled the 60GB from, just in case both the Mobo and HD are dead. Which would suck. =)

I tried this already. I took the 20gb out of this one and put it in mine. it got 2 this dos laoding screen looking thing that it always does where it scans for viruses. it usualy does that then skips down and says c:/ and then skips a couple more lines and then loads. in this case it froze right there. im gonna play around with it tomorrow and if i cant get it workin or identify the problem im gonna have to buy a new HD =(

One of the things everyone has overlooked may be that your CMOS settings may be set up wrong. You have to have a primary slave for your cpu to work. You need to set your Primary slave to be your HD, and secondary to be the cd-rom or something. You need to check that everything is plugged in too.

If it's the IDE controller on your motherboard, the worst case scenario is that you'll have to buy a PCI card with IDE controllers on it. The only problem with that would be if you're using all the PCI slots on your motherboard.

Either way you're looking at a total of $100 or less for a new HDD and PCI card IDE controller.

D3V i have tried all of that.

So do i need a new HD for sure?

Um, you mean you have to have a Primary Master for the PC to boot. ;)

The CD drive can be any of Primary Slave, Secondary Master, or Secondary Slave.

ok i went and bought this thing called ultra ATA/133. high speed dual channel ultra ATA/133 controller. its a pci card that comes with 2 IDE slots. i went to windows setup hit f6 put in the floppy and installed it. but yet it refuses to recognize my hard drive that i plugged into there. wtf???
also when i boot now it says: press f3 to enter config utility or somethin. i do that and it goes to this sscreen with this on it:
press f1 to assign first (HDD) set. and press f2 to remove it. i press f1 and it says to assign a number. waht do i type? i tried 1 and 2 and still no HD.


EDIT:
Well after doin some stuff and messin around with it i got it to recognize the hard drive and start doing the reformat. i deleted the partition, created a new partition, restarted and then formatted. and now once again its stuck at 0%... New HD?? btw, i did this using my pci slot thing i bought.

You should be able to pop in the microsoft cd and it'll go from there, where you can format the HD. And thanks SQRL, thats what I meant, lol. You didn't need a controller in the first place, you just have to put windows on your hd (from what it sounds like to me). If you bought your computer from a company and ask them for some technical support, possibly a free check-up.

Er..... I would suggest returning that controller you just bought and consulting a tech in real life first.

Keep in mind that people can only help you so much on the internet.

Anyways, what exactly are you using to restart? Do you have a boot disk or something or are you actually booting from your WinXP CD?

If the computer is recognizing your hard drive now, then you should be able to put your WinXP CD in the drive, restart your computer, and start setup. You will have to push F6 and insert the floppy like you said, as Windows classifies high speed ATA controllers as SCSI/Promise controllers, which makes no sense. ^_^

Seriously though, how much did this controller cost you and did you price it against the cost of a new motherboard? =\

Its hard to explain what to do on the computer, if I was at your house I could probably troubleshoot and find out whats wrong.

Hey Sqrl, your A+ certified? Are you outta high school? I'm gona start looking for jobs as soon as I get to take my test for the certification.

the thing i bought was only 25 bucks. my friend works at best buy and got me a discount on it which is why i feel kind of bad returning it. I am using the windows XP CD.

yea sqrl i did everything u said in that 4th paragragh but whne i format it it just stays at 0% doesnt matter if i have the ATA card or am just using my regular IDE ports it just stays at 0%. if you help me do this i will be eternaly in debt.

Close this Thread please. Zeal311 Cannot comply with the directions he was given over and over, there is no point in wasting space here. You have to set it up to recognize your HD! Set it as the primary MASTER. You have a disk to come with it, you probably didn't hook it up right. Have a professional come to your house and fix it.

OMG your soooooo ignorant. I did that you moron. Do not talk like you know whats going on because your completely ignorant. When my HD was plugged into my normal IDE port i had it set as primary master and when i got this card thing it wouldnt recognize it until i installed it and then when i restarted it it wouldnt recognize again. STFU thnx

Lol, I'm not ignorant, my computer works just fine. I didn't hook up my shit wrong and probably get esd onto it when I was putting it in. You don't need a controller card your dork ass unless you have more than one HD. The thing is your probably trying to make it detect a different hd/old hd that isn't there/maybe its the wrong port. YOU NEED TO CALL A PROFESSIONAL to come to your house and look at it, because you aren't explaining something right.

1. Your HD is dead
2. Your leaving something out
3. You have a jumper set to the wrong setting, you might have flipped it on accident.

Just call someone to come in and look at it. Or go take the POS back to your friend and get a new one. Or even better yet, when you buy stuff from BestBuy they install it for you... have them do it.

The hardcore computer nerd calls me a dork. That's ironic. Your apparently blind. I bouth the card because my IDE drives on my motherboard may not be working properly. I didn't hook anything up wroung. STFU. Stop posting in the help forum when your too stupid to help anyone. Yea and i dont need anyone to install this. You plug it into your pci slots. NOT rocket science.

It's not rocket science but it is technical.

As D3V has pointed out already (although a bit rudely;)) we can no longer help you from this point on. As D3V also said, if we were there we could easily help you, but we're not, and the problem does require a professional tech present. So your best bet is to take the machine to your closest local computer store that does repairs, or phone and have a tech come to your home to check it out.

There is only so much that a user should try and a whole realm of stuff that should be done by professional techs. In fact you've already gone a lot further then a standard home user would, which is ok, but since there are still no results you have to call a tech. =)

D3V - I've been out of high school for a while, but just got my A+ recently. It's really not that hard at all, just expensive. $70 CAD for a study guide, and $450 CAD to take the two tests. If your thinking of doing it though, either do it ASAP or wait until later in 3rd quarter when they update the exams and then start studying for the new ones. =)