Windows 98 says 'missing ntldr'

[cwebb2]

My home PC which I use for work fairly often has had a heart attack. I’ll explain.
Originally, I ran Windows 98 on it.
I upgraded to Windows XP some time ago, but due to driver unavailability for my scanner, I reverted back to Windows 98. This was at least a year ago.
Yesterday, I deleted what I thought was erroneous XP files, namely ntldr. Now, my machine says ‘ntldr is missing, reboot’.

So what I want to know is : if my system is expecting this file, is my system using Fat32 or NTFS? I could have sworn that when running WIN 98, it said both my HDD’s use Fat32.

So my question would be, should I download a Windows 98 recovery disk or Windows XP recovery disk, and do a Sys C: on it? And if so, how do I ensure I choose the correct one so that I don’t lose data on the drive!????

Thanks
Chris

 

[AirCon]

Hi Chris,

Win98 will not run on NTFS partition. It means that you are using FAT16/32 and you don't need ntldr.

If you're not using dual boot configuration then you can do this:
Boot the system with Win98 boot floppy
Bypass all the configuration (don't run config.sys & autoexec.bat)
To make sure that you can read your harddisk type in "DIR C:"
If you can read it, do a "FDisk /MBR" then "Sys C:"
Boot your system and delete the rest of the XP file (such as: Boot.ini, Bootsect.dos, NTDetect.com, etc..)

Note: eventhough I can say this is very safe to do (I did this many times, never failed) but still backup any data you have in case something goes wrong

Good luck!

-- AirCon --

 

[wolluf]

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

for a boot disk - just pick your version of 98 (OEM or Custom both fine for the job).

PS. If after running sys C: you reboot to a C: prompt instead of 98, you may need to recreate your msdos.sys file.

 

[jairsilva]

This same problem happened to me, but in my case i work in a ibm thinkpad 770z without floppydrive. I tried to install Windows 2000 on it but i was unsuccesfull and since then i have two options of boot (Win 98 and 2000). Yesterday when i powered it on the message "NTLDR file is missing- Press any key to restart" appeared. I Powered it on pushing the F1 key to get in BIOS and did put it to boot from CD (with a Win 98 CD) but it's not recognizing the CD-ROM (In fact it's a DVD Player, but it doesn't have the option to boot from this device). How can i solve this problem, dear fellows?
Jair Silva

 

[smah]

Not too long ago, there was a poorly written virus floating around that would present this error on win9x machines. I reccommend that you try an online virus scan just to be sure.

http://www.mcafee.com/myapps/mfs/default.asp

http://housecall.antivirus.com

 

[jairsilva]

How could i make a virus scan if i can't even start my thinkpad up?

 

[smah]

Good point - obviously I didn't think that all the way through before I posted.