NTLDR is missing; Restore from Rescue & Recovery didn't fix

[pgz]

Traveling with a 6-month old T61, Win XP-Pro.  Worked fine in Delhi.  Flew to Kathmandu.  Comes up with NTLDR is missing, hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to restart.  Used Rescue & Recovery (v.4)  to backup files onto a USB drive, then tried to restore the system from within the Rescue & Recovery pre-load workspace. The restore seemed to run succesfully.  But no luck - still comes up with NTLDR is missing.  What are my options at this point?

[andyP Community SuperMod]

It looks as though your MBR is damaged and needs to be repaired. If you can get hold of a Windows XP cd you can boot from it and run the repair option, or, if you have acces to a floppy you could try the Rescue and Recovery repair disk

[pgz]

Thank you for your reply.

This machine runs XP Pro -- is it necessary to find XP Pro disks, or would any XP disks work?

Don't have a floppy drive.  Would writing the rescue disk from the link you supplied work on a CD?

[andyP Community SuperMod]

Any flavour of 32 Bit XP will be OK.

The R&R repair tool needs to be run from floppy.

[pgz]

One more question - then I'll try to find some XP disks. 

After I enter recovery  (enter "r") it looks like I will arrive at an MSDOS style prompt and I should enter FDISK /MBR ??

This seems clear in www.computerhope.com for operating systems through Win 2000, but I'm not sure whether this is also the right way to go in XP.

Thanks!

-P.

[carbon_unit]

try "fixboot" at the cli.

[RescueMe]

Hi Andy,

I had the exactly same problem. The difference is:  Mine is Thinkpad R40, XP professional and I don't have a Windows XP CD. I just searched IBM website, I did not find any clue about where I can access to a floppy with R40. What am I going to do? I have spent 5 days trying to rescue my laptop with the backup in a USB hard drive, it does not work. I am exhausted. I'd very appreciate your help.

Thank you.  

Naijeen

[RescueMe]

Hi,

I had the exactly same problem. I don't have XP cd, neither. I'd appreciate if you can tell me how you fixed your laptop. Did XP cd work? I am not good at computer. I don't understand what you mentioned about FDISK /MBR.

Thank you for your time.

Naijeen

[RescueMe]

Hi,

I had the exactly same problem. The difference is:  Mine is Thinkpad R40, XP pro. Rescue and Recovery 3.1 and I don't have a Windows XP CD.

There is no clue about where I can access to a floppy with R40 on IBM website. I just found your reply but I don't understand what you said about " fixboot" at cli? What is cli and where can I access to fixboot? These sound too professional to me. Can you explain more?

 I'd very appreciate your help.

Thank you.  

Naijeen