MSI Z87 mpower mobo NTLDR missing

[soldierguy]

Got myself stuck and don't have any more ideas.

Not an advanced PC guy but I've done system builds before, but this time I swapped in a new mobo MSI Z87 mpower, 1150 socket, i7-4771 chip, 2 sticks of Gskill 8gb ram(F3-1600C10D-16GAO R)(slots 2 and 4), and new cooler and expected all to work, but can't get it to boot Win7.

Get NTLDR is missing error message.

I looked up the history of the message and basically its an older op sys message but apparently still means it can't load the Win 7. Or find it etc.

I've done all kinds of things. Unplugged all drives except the C win 7 hard drive. Ran startup repair, but it couldn't solve it. I'm still working on it but at the moment its not connected to the internet. I don't have a router and I have cable internet that sometimes easily allows me to switch my connection to my lap top and sometimes not. At the moment I'm using the laptop.

Is it something to do with my existing older spinning disk hard drive and the new mobo faster sata connectors? I was using SATA before just earlier version I guess, but as I recall the mobo is backwards compatible legacy etc on these things. Or at least I recall settings somewhere as I wandered through the BIOS etc.

Hoping at this moment to attempt Mirror System Restore from my exterior usb hard drive, but thought I'd ask for ideas. I'm wandering, and maybe its something simple.

Oh ya spent plenty of time in Boot Loader section failing to save the drive c and the boot location. It keeps apparantly reverting to the "UEFI built in EFI Shell" whatever that is, but i just highlight the C drive and press enter and things startoff as if its trying to load, but then I get some sort of error etc.

Any ideas? Need help. thanks

Oh ya i should have mentioned..I've spent plenty of time in the Boot Loader menu..trying to select the drive with the opsys, but it always appears to revert to UEFI Built in EFI Shell...whatever that is. I can't seem to successfully save the C drive as the boot drive. Dont get that. Looks straight forward, but I'm not getting it to happen

 

[EarthDog]

Did that drive come from the X58 based system in your signature? If so, that is a HUGE jump as far as trying to keep your OS...

Time to install windows from scratch on your new system.

 

[soldierguy]

Hey Earthdog thanks...I'm not familiar with what you mean regarding signature etc, but yes didn't reinstall win 7..Do I need to do that?

I just removed the existing board etc and left existing HD with win 7 as is. Bad?

 

[EarthDog]

Your signature that you setup that lists your hardware specs at the bottom of each post is what I was referencing in my post above...

Depending on how big of a jump in platforms (3 essentially), in your case, I would have resinstalled from scratch, absolutely. A lot of times, with smaller jumps, you can get away with such a move though...not this time I guess.

There may be a way around it that others can help with, however I would start fresh personally, yep.

EDIT: Redduc, what did you edit in his first post? LOL!

 

[soldierguy]

thx earthdog..oh ya my sig..yes that is accurate..made a big jump..I forget can I reinstall win 7 on my existing spinning hard drive without losing other files I have on there? I mostly just keep the op sys on the C drive but lately i took some important pics that are mostly still on the C drive,, I suspect Regarding my last week encounter with a large truck on my bike...bad.

Think i can reinstall win 7 without losing those pics??/need them for insurance etc..If i have to I'll buy a new drive...SSD etc and put win7 there..add retrieve the pics from existing drive at a later date and reformat it etc

Does that make sense...if not..just got out of hospital Oct 12...still fuzzy haha

 

[Robert17]

That's what I'd do....get an SSD, install the OS on it, then retrieve any docs/pics you want. Best way to make sure, especially since you've got insurance claims involved.

I tried to overwrite a similar 'NTLDR missing' drive for a friend last year, wound up retrieving all the files first via a spare drive, then re-formatted the original once the files were safe on a third drive. All was well that ended well.

 

[madhatter256]

You can install Win7 on the same drive, which I believe is an SSD from what you are describing. However, during setup, do not format or delete the partition. Simply select the C: drive and click NEXT and then the program will ask you what to do with the old OS install. It's been a while since I've done this but basically you can have the setup program literally move your old OS and the User files into a WINDOWS.OLD folder, which you can then use to retrieve the data from after the new Win7 is installed. Once you've retrieved all the data, you can then simply delete that windows.old folder. you will have to reinstall all of the programs regardless, you cannot simply copy/paste those over to the new install.

However, you can also try this.... go into the MSI bios of your new motherboard and see if the SATA controller is set as AHCI or IDE or RAID. If the UEFI BIOS is currently set to RAID or AHCI, then switch it over to IDE and then see if the old OS will boot.

If it set as IDE, then switch over to AHCI or RAID. If neither of those options work, then do what I described earlier.

 

[EarthDog]

However, you can also try this.... go into the MSI bios of your new motherboard and see if the SATA controller is set as AHCI or IDE or RAID. If the UEFI BIOS is currently set to RAID or AHCI, then switch it over to IDE and then see if the old OS will boot.

If it set as IDE, then switch over to AHCI or RAID. If neither of those options work, then do what I described earlier.

+1. Completely forgot about that... I bet that is it...

 

[soldierguy]

Thanks for all. I'll work at it and let you know how it goes.

Tom

 

[soldierguy]

Well I finally got it working. And it seems great so far, but just finished installing all Win7 updates ugh! and getting Security Essentials the same. So plenty to learn.

At first I went into the mobo Bios and as best i could made changes to the SATA controllers etc trying to switch from the default to a variety of other configurations, but still couldn't get the existing version of Win 7 to load...even after repair etc. Maybe someone else coulda got it, but i didn't.

So i ordered a SSDHD...my first. Wow its fast!! 250GB Samsung 840EVO. I skipped all the transfer of file setup stuff since i was trying to keep all the old stuff on the other spinning drive to recover Documents and pics later and just reinstalled win 7/64 directly from the OEM disc onto the 840EVO.

It all seemed to go fine. And I quickly went back to the old drive where I had the previous version of Win7 and looked at all and found quite a few files that I could copy(docs/iracing stuff/pics etc) to another already existing internal spinning drive and then reformatted the old spinning C drive which is now empty and available for storage etc.

I ran into a snag at this point. I couldn't get connected to the internet with the new Z87 Mpower mobo, and couldn't figure it for a time. I took this opportunity to add a wireless router Trendnet AC1750 and I got it working fine with my laptop but in either wireless or cable connected I couldn't get the Mpower mobo connected to the internet.

After a bunch of messing around I finally came to realize I didn't have a LAN driver that would run it. The mobo came with a couple discs and sure enough after I installed the driver software.Qualcomm Atheros Killer Network Manager it connected good.

The Bios is mouse friendly and has all kinds of fan controls and other monitoring features plus auto overclocking methods etc. I haven't even begun to look at it all, but now that it seems I'm getting all to work good, that's my next step.

Thanks for all the help