i need computer help !!

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brantmacga

brantmacga

Señor Member
Location
Georgia
Occupation
Former Child
okay guys, i need help on my computer if any of you have some to spare. for the past couple of months i've been using my wife's dinosaur for everything because my board and processor got zapped. i ripped the hard drive out and slaved it in her computer. anyway, her computer just couldn't run all my office software so i picked up a new board, processor, and ram today. i installed everything, put my hdd's in and started it up. i get an error message "NTLDR is missing, press any key to restart". Now even though this stuff is new, I figured maybe its been on the shelf for say, 5 years, and the BIOS couldn't run any NT based platform. I had an hdd w/ 98SE installed and loaded it in. Computer starts fine. NOW: i couldn't get on the web to find a bios update because the win98 wouldn't recognize on-board LAN, SO, i upgraded the 98SE to winXP hoping it would update the BIOS in the process allowing me to run XP. Well, all that worked famously and I'm up and running with XP, but when I try to hook my original main HDD back up, I still get the 'NTLDR' error message. I currently have that hdd slaved to the one i'm using now, and can access it. I can run most all of my programs except for microsoft office and accounting software because the registries don't match. I'm out of ideas; does anyone else have a thought as to what it could be?


edit to add --->> i have already tried to boot from the XP cd, and did the repair install and that still didn't fix the problem.
 
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when an NTFS system is installed, it only installs the IDE drivers for whatever chipset is on the motherboard. If you replace the motherboard you wont be able to boot from the HD in question. There are some fixes here http://tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm

EDIT: best way to fix it is to use your XP cd and do a repair install. not recovery console, but where the cd detects the existing installation and asks if you want to repair it. Your programs and data will be safe, but back up critical data first as you should before performing any os repair.
 
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wireguru said:
when an NTFS system is installed, it only installs the IDE drivers for whatever chipset is on the motherboard. If you replace the motherboard you wont be able to boot from the HD in question. There are some fixes here http://tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm

EDIT: best way to fix it is to use your XP cd and do a repair install. not recovery console, but where the cd detects the existing installation and asks if you want to repair it. Your programs and data will be safe, but back up critical data first as you should before performing any os repair.
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hey thanks. coincidentally, i was just reading that site before coming back over here. its in the process of formatting a boot disk for me, so i'm about to try it again. i did already try the XP cd and it still didn't work. hopefully this boot disk will. thanks again.
 
okay all set. i got the patch from that website and got it up and running. thanks for the help buddy.
 
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