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Thread ID: 92079 2008-07-28 04:50:00 I'm an idiot, so click here please jamesyboi (6579) Press F1
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692998 2008-07-28 04:50:00 I had Windows Vista on my PC dual booted with XP, eventually stopped using vista and removed it, this caused problems with the bootloader and I ended up reinstalling windows XP over the old one and formatting the partition that vista was on, did all this about 4 months ago and has been running fine since.. anyways..

the stupid part is I deleted NTLDR and NETDETECT.COM from the drive where Vista used to be after seeing them in the root drive while using nero (were hidden before cos of folder settings).

So I deleted those two files, possibly more, and surprise surprise i get the

'NTLDR is missing, press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart' message on boot.

So I took my harddrive out and connected it to my brothers PC with the cable that the DVD drive was using, copied his NTLDR and NETDETECT.COM files to the place where I deleted them and then re-assembled my computer.

Now I get the error "WindowsRoot/System32/file.file is missing, please reinstall"

So I figure his boot files are set up different from mine and is causing PC to look in wrong drive or something

So I undo that process by deleting the two files and reassembling my computer, trying a new approach of burning a legit windows XP from my usb flash to an old CDRW that I found.

So now I'm attempting to repair boot with windows CD.

but before that I dropped a screw into the PC somewhere when unscrewing the harddrive so I took everything apart and couldn't find it, might be inbetween case and motherboard but I don't think so..

Now when I boot I cant see my dvd drive in the bios as a slave or anything & cant run setup from it! (I have two IDE harddrives and 1 DVD drive).

So I thought maybe I got the IDE belt cables mixed up or something, I think I've tried every combination possible but I can't seem to get the harddrives and the DVD drive to show up together, heres the results:

DVD Drive appears as master, nothing else visible
2 Harddrives appear but no DVD Drive
Nothing appears
DVD Drive appears but bios freezes when trying to detect for other things.

I have one IDE cable that has a blue connector and one with a black connector. I've tried switching them around countless ways but I can't get them to all appear, I even tried my brothers DVD drive and same thing

But I can't see my brothers DVD drive in his bios either but its visible in My Computer after boot so maybe this is normal, either way.. I don't think I can get the DVD drive to work until im in XP..

When selecting boot priority it will have 'none' or 'disabled' for the DVD/CD drive option when the harddrives are working, which it didn't used to do..

I dont have a floppy drive either (sold it). But I noticed instead of floppy under boot priorities I can select USB FDD and USB Zip. Since I have XP on USB I tried both and they identify it as flash voyager, but then nothing happens just a blinking cursor and a busy harddrive, but teh USB is not doing any loading itself..

So now I'm wondering what the hell my IDE belt arrangement was before all this and why I can't get things back to normal, if only there was some other way to replace the NTLDR and NETDETECT.COM boot files..

Any ideas anyone? any help appreciated. 		jamesyboi (6579)
692999 2008-07-28 04:55:00 The main thing is

Theres a red (maybe blue) line on the IDE cable. On one side

Make sure this is going to pin 1 on whatever IDE device. Also with the blue connector, this ALWAYS goes on the mobo IDE header.

Not the other way round (the dvd/hdd end). 		Speedy Gonzales (78)
693000 2008-07-28 04:58:00 yep I've got that going, im thinking the reason why NTLDR and NETDETECT.COM were on a different partition than XP is because Vista used to be there maybe (hense why i deleted them). I'll try putting copies of them from the usb onto XP root drive instead of that partition jamesyboi (6579)
693001 2008-07-28 05:00:00 I would also check boot.ini on XP. Its probably still got the Vista info in it.

If you havent checked it yet 		Speedy Gonzales (78)
693002 2008-07-28 05:00:00 Holy crap ! what a chapter of "events" :eek:

Edited: Ok I see speedy got here first, is the Board actually Booting Now ? 		wainuitech (129)
693003 2008-07-28 05:08:00 yep, just copied NTDETECT.COM (been calling it netdetect.com) to my XP drive from bro's PC gonna try now jamesyboi (6579)
693004 2008-07-28 05:36:00 If what you try doesn't work, go to This Page (www.tinyempire.com) on Number 2 download the fix for either a floppy, CD or USB drive that you want to boot from.

Then you can boot from the device Eg: CD .

Read the instruction on the site "Use windows to fix the boot files on the hard drive."

used this Boot CD lots of times, in fact there was even had one customer who simply left the CD in the drive instead of fixing the problem properly.

Sometimes you may need to do a repair install if the above does not work. 		wainuitech (129)
693005 2008-07-28 11:51:00 hmmm... nothing worked so I ended up attatching both the DVD drive and the main harddrive with the same IDE cable. Works for now, had to reinstall with Windows XP Professional N which a m8 had on CD, then once booted with that reinstall again with the windows on usb and here I am installing a million things again heh jamesyboi (6579)
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