Hi all
Haven't been on here for awhile.
Just thought I would run a strange one by you guys.
It is annoying and a little scary and not real sure how to proceed.
This could be a long one so try not to get bored lol
I was diagnosing a Dell Latitude D810 and repairing/reinstalling a P4b at the same time.
The D810 had mysteriously started hanging and I was testing hardware removing components and replacing with components that had worked in the past, you know the drill.
I was reinstalling the os on the P4b because I needed a reliable computer to keep up on my taxes, emails etc and I thought this would be a good excuse to fix what had been the wife's computer. She killed it and I gave her an ipad so I wouldn't have to keep fixing things for her.
So I am accessing folders on my network from both computers. Installing programs etc. Upgraded Auslogics registry cleaner from within an old version. Ran it on one ran it on the other reboot one. NTLDR missing hmm.
Research, look at the drive from recovery console. What would of caused that?
Do you think the Auslogics upgrade did something different?
Reboot laptop and gawd it is gone too???
Restore laptop, reinstall P4b Xp os. They are both running xp sp3.
Contact Auslogics retest with their link as well as recreate how I updated the registry cleaner and all is fine.
No NTLDR error...this time.
Two computers went down at the very same time.
Virus?
Avg hasn't found one.
Life is short so I decide lets carry on.
Well I was getting to the bottom of the hanging problems, flash player not updating and probably the reason. No more hanging, knock on wood.
But I was reinstalling the bluetooth stack and I had problems. Reinstalled a few times finally got it and on reboot.
NTLDR is missing, again.
D810 NTLDR missing...p4b fine on reboot.
Backup non booting harddrive so I can look at it if need be.
D810 restored again with last good backup.
Bluetooth reinstalled no issues and hopefully no more NTLDR probs.
Something is up.
What? I don't know.
Any questions or directions?
I am doing backups twice a week now and would like to get to the bottom of this.
Is there a way to prevent this from reoccurring?
I have seen many posts on this subject and none are definitive.
PS
Bluetooth stack reinstalled after recovery and no probs on boot up.
I will be comparing the corrupt backup root to my current functioning one.
Download hard drive diagnostics from the hard drive maker's web site. The dell may have diagnostics built in bios. if it passes, do the error checking from the tolls page on the drive.
NTLDR missing is the sign of a corrupt partition.
The list of issue points to a failing drive or motherboard - either that or the file system is badly screwed.
Boot in recovery console, run chkdsk /p
If issues persist replace the drive.
Just tried the lifeguard diagnostics from Western Digital.
It passed
Did the "tools" tab from the disk properties and ran Chkdisk (5 processes)
Hung for 20 hrs on 7% of stage 4.
Reboot and it ran again and was clean.
Remember now this all started on two computers sharing programs that were installed from the same network drive...
then just one had a repeat later....
Just to stay focused.
The laptop had the reoccurrence of Ntldr missing and that is the one I am testing.
Just as a kinda off handed chance, are their 2 memory sticks in the said computer and are they both identical?
The D810, currently, has two sticks of different size and brand.
When I began diagnosing and trouble shooting the D810 for a freezing issue.
(Which I believe I have fixed, most likely a number of things and flashplayer not updated properly was probably the cause. No more freezing.)
One of the things I had done was reinstalled old hardware that was working years ago and was replaced due to a performance upgrades and not a repair.
I had changed the harddrives temporarily to run tests as well as changing the mem strips.
The harddrive currently installed is the latest one and it is operating as it should.
I am waiting for a new replacement hinge (s) and when they arrive I do have two identical sticks that can go back in.
Could two different memory sticks cause ntldr, and ntdect files to disappear? and many others on the root.
The attached file, sorry it is blurry or small but I was having trouble uploading a clear file for some reason.
Shows the different number of root files between the good operating os and a bad one.
As you can see most of the files on the root had disappeared.
I am wondering if a reboot by a program could of affected a number of files or programs running in the background.
Lets say a program that had just been installed or upgraded and it requires a reboot.
If something was open and running in the background and it got closed, unexpectedly, could it take all the root files with it?
Say Acronis or some other program that could start up unexpectedly cause it was listed as a task to run.
You get where I am going with this....
Nothing appears to be running and you click ok to restart and it catches a program that is starting up...and forces it to close or to fail to start.
Is this possible?
Last edited by Smokin Joe; January 23rd, 2014 at 01:11 PM.
NTLDR is missing ???
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Originally Posted by MobilePCPhysician
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