NTLDR is Missing

Ok here is the situation.
I have x2 500gb hard drives and i want to have Windows XP on one hard drive for benchmarking, and Windows Vista on the other drive for games and everything else. I installed Windows XP first on one drive, (formatted and installed) and booted into it fine. Then i install Windows Vista on the other drive (formatted and installed) and booted into that fine. Now when i boot my PC altogether
1. it doesnt give me the option of which operating system to go into right after Bios
2. I can boot into Windows Vista (the last OS i installed) but when i try to boot into Windows XP (by pressing F8 for "BBS Pop Up Menu") It gives me the error "NTLDR is Missing, please press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to reboot" and it keeps giving me that error!

What is happening, what did i do wrong?

Ok, since you can boot into Vista, take a gander at this tutorial on XP/Vista dual-booting and see if it helps you straighten out this issue.

im not trying to make a partition, i have 2 different hdds

With 2 HDDs I would not want to put both OSes on one HDD either. I skimmed down that howto some, and found this, which seems like the error you are describing:

http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp said:

IMPORTANT NOTE – after the initial file copy, Windows XP reboots and loads up the GUI-based component of the install. You may get the following error: “A disk read error occurred – press Ctrl-Alt-Del to continue”. This is caused by a corrupt bootloader – click here to see how to fix this problem.

Click to expand...

Corruption at the bootloader will cause an NTLDR Not Found error

what do you recommend i do then?

This is from: http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp#corrupt

Restoring Vista and dual booting

Because you can’t use the Windows XP bootloader to boot Vista, we have to reinstate Vista’s bootloader to the MBR and configure it to manage both operating systems.
Compared with scenarios involving Ubuntu where you have to reinstall the GRUB bootloader, getting Vista up and operational again is very easy.
Boot from the Vista DVD and on the screen where you’re prompted to “Install now”, select “Repair your computer”.


Repair Vista


The next screen searches for local Vista installations – there should only be one, so click Next.

Choose Vista


This loads the System Recovery Options screen. Select the first option – Startup Repair. This looks for problems which would prevent Vista from loading (like a missing bootloader) and automatically fixes them.

Startup Repair


If you click on “Click here for diagnostic and repair details” and scroll to the bottom of the list, it shows that the problem detected and repaired was a corrupt boot sector (according to Vista, anyway).

Repair Diagnostics


Click Close and then Finish, and the system will restart and boot into Vista.
Now we need to enable dualbooting with XP, and EasyBCD is the best application to achieve this.

Download and install EasyBCD.

Launch the app and go to Add/Remove Entries.
Under “Add an Entry” and under the Windows tab and select in the Version drop-down list “Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3”.
Change the Drive to E:\ and the name to “Windows XP”, then click “Add Entry” and “Save”.

Vista & XP - EasyBCD


Reboot the system and you’ll have two entries in the Vista bootloader, and can boot into either operating system.

And this will fix the NTLDR problem?

This is supposed to allow you to use Vista's bootloader and boot.ini to choose between XP and VIsta. That tells me that it will make the XP boot.ini entry point to the correct NTLDR on the correct HDD.

K i got the two options, but when i try to boot to XP it says "File: \NTLDR" and "Status: 0xc000000f" .. "Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt"

Are those S-ATA drives? I have read that Vista will put its bootloader into S-ATA #0 by default. Try swapping the cables and doing it again.

i switched the cables and now it doesnt boot into that menu anymore, it just goes straight to the NTLDR Error message

By try doing it again, I meant booting from the Vista DVD again and going through the steps in post #6. I should have been clearer.

Windows XP users

1. Insert the Windows XP bootable CD into the computer.
2. When prompted to press any key to boot from the CD, press any key.
3. Once in the Windows XP setup menu press the "R" key to repair Windows.
4. Log into your Windows installation by pressing the "1" key and pressing enter.
5. You will then be prompted for your administrator password, enter that password.
6. Copy the below two files to the root directory of the primary hard disk. In the below example we are copying these files from the CD-ROM drive letter "E". This letter may be different on your computer.

copy e:\i386\ntldr c:\
copy e:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\

7. Once both of these files have been successfully copied, remove the CD from the computer and reboot.

Click to expand...

If i do this, will it make so that i cant boot into Vista anymore, or will it work (ie. what i want)

no i tryed that again, it didnt work (booting the Vista disk and repairing Start up)

This should fix XP boot, but will likely break Vista boot.
Do the NTLDR; ntdetect.com copy from \i386, but while you are in the recovery console, take a look at the boot.ini using bootcfg and fix it if neccessary. Refer here. Also, you might want to run fixmbr and fixboot. Reboot.

Having not watched the process leading up to where the problem started, it is difficult for me to visualize the problem.

So its impossible to have both OS' working at once?

Not impossible, no. You can get them to dualboot. I'd suggest that if trying to fix XP boot then trying to repair Vista in as in the steps above fails, just wipe them both, and start fresh. This time though, find a howto guide to assist you in the process.

For a while I ran both of them on separate hard drives. I installed them each as the only drive in the system, then put them both in with the Vista drive as the lowest numbered SATA slot. Was able to boot them using the boot menu in the BIOS. Only ran it that way for a month or so...but it did work.

Dice said:

Not impossible, no. You can get them to dualboot. I'd suggest that if trying to fix XP boot then trying to repair Vista in as in the steps above fails, just wipe them both, and start fresh. This time though, find a howto guide to assist you in the process.

Click to expand...

Ill try this.

But if it does fail, can you link me to a guide for the "starting from scratch" idea, while i try this other idea out (?)

Weird i did it, I just reinstalled Windows XP on that Hdd, but now when i go to boot into Vista it gives me the option to boot into Vista or xp (which gets this error)

i just pick what one i want to boot into via BBS Pop Up

(Fixed?)