"Missing NTLDR fix" problem.....Help...Thrax or anyone

adarryl

Buddy of mine tried to help a friend with a missing NTLDR issue and I put him on to Thrax's artice: "Repairing Windows XP in Eight Commands." However, he booboo'd and just emailed me for help. Here is his email to me:


"Darryl--

I went to the site you suggested-- http://icrontic.com/articles/repair_windows_xp -- and started to go through the process.

Everything was going well untill I accidentally hit the enter key without first hitting the Y key after the question
"Add installation to boot list?"

Then nothing happened, so I typed in y AND ENTER. again, nothing happened so I typed in "exit " and shut down.

Attempting to repeat the process, I now get a prompt that the file cannot be found when I enter
"ATTRIB -H C:BOOT.INI

Any suggestions?

The XP disk I am using to get to the repair console is an XP Professional, DELL disk. It says I can install XP Pro. Is that an option for me, or would it further screw things up since this is a Compaq with XP Home Edition? I can get some installation keys from any of the Dells we have using this same edition of XP.

If I simply install XP Professional, do I choose
C: Partition1 [NTFS]
or
D: Partition2 (SYSTEM_SAVE) [FAT32]


Will appreciate any advice."



Can anyone or you, Thrax, point my pal toward a fix? Thanks!

Snarkasm

If he wants to install XP Pro, inform him that A) he will lose all his files when he does so, but he will get a nice squeaky-clean Pro install to start all over with and B) that if that's what he decides to do, he should be installing to C, the NTFS partition. The other one is likely an on-disk full restore from the original manufacturer that would let him completely reinstall XP Home just by hitting a button while the computer was booting up.