BleepingComputer.com: NTLDR Error

i recently had a problem with my computer, i was getting a bootmgr error.
it turned out that my hard drive was busted, and wasn't showing up in the bios.

i sent in my drive to a data recovery place, he transferd a 360 gig to a new 500 WD.

i just received my drive back today, at first i was still getting a bootmgr error. i restarted my computer with partition wizard and saw that my main drive was not active. instead my secondary drive was. i switched them and restarted my computer.

now instead of the bootmgr error i get a ntldr error.
i've been trying to do some reading and from what i've heard there's no such thing for vista.

i've gone into setup and see that all the drives are there, i've tried to set the boot sequence up and i've tried to load up the default settings.

so what am i supposed to do, i just ended up paying $300 to get this thing fixed and i don't want to lose all my data.

there's this site i found for a fix but i don't know if i'm supposed to be using it for vista or not since there is no ntldr for it
http://tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm


also, if it matter, when i go into set up i noticed that both of my sata drives read as masters according to the boot sequence menu. my ide drive still reads as a slave though. i don't know if this matters or not, i'm just not sure how to set up sata drives.

please any help will be appreciated.

so the drive you lost was the drive the operating system on?

If so did the recovery center move the os files because i dont think they would work, because the drive is not set up as a boot drive.

yeah, it was my main drive

how would it not work, isn't it supposed to be an exact copy of everything.

what am i supposed to do about it.

there has to be something i can do to set it up as a boot drive. like i said i set the drive up as active in partition wizard and made sure it was at the top of the list in the boot sequence.

did you/can you set the drive as boot in partition wizard?

You could probably boot off your Vista installation disc and do a Startup Repair. Sometimes this works, depending on the exact configuration and/or what is screwed up.

computerxpds, on Apr 23 2010, 09:06 PM, said:

i set it as active if that's what you mean, that's supposed to make it the boot drive. i don't know much about partition wizard, is there something else i should have done?

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i'll give it a try, i'm not going to lose any data if i do this will i?
that's the only thing i'm worried about.

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no it should not

No, a Startup Repair just looks for problems with the operating system and tries to fix whatever it finds. Your documents and such will not be affected.

i did a startup repair and it didn't seem to work.

i checked the details and it said there was a root cause problem.
it said that there's no valid system partition or something like that.

what am i supposed to do now? i don't understand why it's not working.
this drive is supposed to be an exact clone of my old one, so shouldn't everything still be the same?

deathx88, on Apr 24 2010, 07:09 PM, said:

Not necessarily.

If I were you, I'd just get the data off that you need and do a clean install of Vista....unless anybody else has better ideas...

i second keyboardninja, like i said there might have been files that were move to a different place or a bad/corrupt file.

this is what i was hoping to avoid. i'm trying to make a clean install a last resort type of thing.

there has to be some type of fix, maybe someone has any other suggestions. i might try and message the guy that did my hard drive and see what he has to say about it.

if it does come down it it how am i supposed to go about it. i might have access to an external hard drive, am i just supposed to copy and paste the entire drive onto the external or what?
and i never made a recovery disc or anything, so how would i go about reinstalling vista? can i install it using the boot disc i have?

anyone?

if no one has any other answers could you guys at least help me with my other question.

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If you do a clean install without a format, Vista will move everything previously on the drive to a folder named Windows.old. You could then retrieve your data from there after the installation.

If you have an installation disc, then reinstalling should be no problem. You just boot off the disc and follow the prompts.

If you're hesitant to do a clean install before backing up your data (I would be, too), you can copy stuff to an external using the command prompt (whilst booted off your installation disc...choose Repair your computer instead of "Install Now") just to be sure.

If that wasn't clear, let me know and I'll try to explain it better.

keyboardNinja, on Apr 26 2010, 12:15 AM, said:

i've never had to install or recover windows before so i might need a couple more details explained to me.

i don't have the installation disc, i think i have the recovery disc. i'm not sure if those are those same things or not. i'm pretty sure i downloaded it here.
http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vist...-disc-download/

if i can use this would i go to install now? or when i click on repair computer go to the option called 'windows complete pc restore'
which one would i use?

and how would i use the command prompt to copy everything. is there a command that would just copy the entire drive over.
i have another computer i can use, i figure i would put my main drive that's messed up as a slave in the computer i'm using now and just use the external through the usb. then i would be able to copy everything in windows explorer, right?
or would there be a better way to do that, i just want to make sure i'm getting all the hidden system files and stuff like that.


EDIT: i just read that website, i guess it says it can't be used to reinstall vista, so how can i get a hold of an installation disc. the computer i'm using right now is basically the same as mine, it has some different hardware but it's almost the same. it has a recovery drive on it, would i be able to make a disc on this computer and use it for mine? but if i did that would i have to download a whole bunch of drivers?

This post has been edited by deathx88: 26 April 2010 - 12:38 AM