NTLDR missing

Computer Help and Discussions Windows Security
1

Don't know what happened. One day, got a prolonged black screen but then booted up, next day got the message on a black screen that NTLDR was missing, and went into a reboot loop.

Acronis backup image didn't work. Don't know why. Gave up after a few tries.

It was time for a reinstall anyway. WXP Home had slowed down a lot. I reinstalled WXP Pro and didn't like it. Many 3rd party apps didn't work, and many that did were sloooow. Video screen was slow and jerky. Maybe driver and file path issues? Decided it would be quicker to just reinstall WXP Home from the disks (all 13 of'em) ugh. But thank goodness for the backup disks.

Both those wxp installations reformatted the HD. After the first one, I deleted the HP Recovery Partition, but the second install (oem, 13 disks, ya gotta sit and watch'em <_< ) put it back.

Now The Quirk: When I reinstalled the old free version of Powershadow, v. 2.82, the one that required an internet connection to register, it showed up after restart as the registered version!

This phenomenon (PS ver. 2.82 still registered after reformat) was mentioned over at Wilders, and DennisD referred to it here, but I was never sure that anyone had actually done a reformat as opposed to a repair job. Well, by golly, I did, twice. But something on the hard drive survived to show Powershadow that it is still registered. See the picture, taken after all that reinstalling.

ps6installedsmall398.jpg.xs.jpg

Shadowtip still tries to phone home, and Outpost blocks it :P . See the picture.

ps8phonehomesmall577.jpg.xs.jpg

Learned a couple of things:

1. Glad I had taken the time to make the backup disks. Most Important.

2. When this PC is finally reconfigured, I'll make a full backup image and make sure it works before I need it.

3. Reformatting apparently doesn't change everything. Wonder what else it missed?

2

Definatly weird, unless it was able to get passed the firewall once to re-register.

And a format does wipe everything, no way a normal program would 'recover' some registry entry to re-register.

Are you sure it wasn't already registered before you did the backup discs.

3
. . .unless it was able to get passed the firewall once to re-register.

. . .And a format does wipe everything, . . .

. . .it wasn't already registered before you did the backup discs.

It is interesting, isn't it?

Reformatted and reinstalled twice. First from a new WXP pro DVD, second from backup disks made before the machine had ever hooked up to the net. Also, was not hooked up to the net at the time PS was installed the second time.

There is much writing about PS over at Wilders, mostly a moot issue now, as the application is no longer free. Interesting, nonetheless. Go see: http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=971563. Post 541 deals directly w/ the issue.

I posted this mainly FYI for the members here who tried it out back when it was free, but also thinking maybe someone here can shed some light on how this can be.

Also am wondering why NTLDR went missing. Gotta be in there somewhere. :P

4

I remember having a NTLDR issue a long time ago and had to do a reinstallation. I then created an emergency boot disk that contained NTLDR, ntdetect and boot.ini and I think the computer booted fine after running the disk at startup. It's a long time since I used that disk though (it's a floppy disk so it shows how long ago it is since I tried this). Perhaps it makes good sense to copy these files to a disk just in case there is a problem.