How to fix: NTLDR is missing, press any key to restart
What happened?
When your computer starts, the BIOS attempts to find the primary hard drive's active partition to read the first sector for the MBR (Master Boot Record), it uses that info to load the rest of the OS. For Windows NT4/2k/XP the NTLDR (New Technology Loader) takes it from there. If you get the "NTLDR is missing, press any key to restart" what's most likely going on is the BIOS either didn't look for the right drive, didn't find the right partition, it wasn't active, didn't find the MBR, or the MBR didn't list NTLDR in the right place, the location of NTLDR changed, or you are looking at a hardware failure situation (memory/cables/drive/motherboard/etc). Windows Vista does not boot this way, you can still use my floppy to boot into an existing installation of 98/nt/xp, but I've not had a chance to test Windows Vista.
If possible, try to change back whatever hardware or software change you just made (this could be as simple as leaving a floppy disk in the drive or you need to recheck the cables). (What if I made new changes that I want to keep?).
Make a NTLDR boot disk to get back into Windows.
The quick test to make sure your OS installation is still good is to create an MBR and NTLDR on a floppy disk and check your partitions, this disk will check many of the partitions for a working windows installation. Here are the instructions to do this:
1. Get a blank floppy (whatever is on it will be erased), and put it into a working computer (What if the computer doesn't have a floppy drive?).
2. Download fixntldr.exe onto a working computer (fixntldr-winnt if you are using Windows 2000 or Windows NT4) (What if I don't want to download a file from a website I don't trust?). (What if my backup system is Mac / Linux or another alt OS?).
3. Run the fixntldr.exe file by double clicking it. Click OK to overwrite the blank floppy disc in the working computer, you should see some screens about writing a new floppy disk.
4. Do you remember if the folder you had your Windows installation in was named "Windows"? If you can't remember just keep going (What if it was not named Windows but WINNT like in NT4 or 2000?) .
5. Put the new floppy (or cd/usb drive) you have just created into the computer that gets the NTLDR is missing error message, turn the broken computer off.
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