Can anyone help with my computer please?

[poppypoppy 10]

Hi

 

I downloaded something last week on my computer and it was obviously iffy..and when I come to boot the pc up the next time I wouldnt boot up...got a black screen with some writing on it and at the bottom its saying....NTLDR is missing...and to press CTRL ALT and DEL to restart....after doing this it just returns me to the black screen....can anyone offer me any advice please...its running Windows XP service pack 3...I dont have the XP disc as this was only a cheap pc from a little pc shop in Sheffield couple of years ago so they built it their way..I dont know much at all about computers so any advice would be very much appreciated.....I have pics of my late Mom and my beautiful grandbabies on it too..... Thanks......

[Henamy21 10]

can you get into safe mode

[poppypoppy 10]

No..I cant get into anything...soon as the computer starts to boot up the black screen comes up....

[Kidorry 189]

When you start it up keep pressing F12 and I think that may take you into the P.C.

[Ghostrider 11]

The best advice I can give you, is to contact "Mozalan" on here. He will be able to tell you how to sort it out..

[Xt500 10]

Turn on the computer and after the bios screen press F8.If theres anything left of a windows system you will get a menu or go into safe mode.

[ShefStealth 10]

NTLDR is the bootloader for Windows - worst case scenario it seems that probably your master boot record (MBR) is corrupted, or your hard drive isn't properly being seen by the computer to load sector 0, and subsequently load the operating system. You'd need an XP disk to repair it, and hopefully it is just the bootloader that's corrupt. It's repairable if it is just the bootloader - your data should still be accessable once the bootloader is repaired.

 

Your best bet to repair the bootloader is from a command prompt/recovery console. Your safeset way to get there is with an XP CD (not a disk image CD!) Do you know anyone who has an XP CD that you could borrow? We can then walk you through the process of how to get this sorted

[fake 10]

Unfortunately you will need an XP disk to fix this.

 

You boot up with the disk and go into the recovery console, from there you chose the fixmbr command. That will then write a new boot record, you then take out the cd and boot up as normal.

 

Sorry, got interrupted while writing and another poster suggested the same.

[Xt500 10]

The other thing to consider is something caused it. That could be a hardware issue,memory or hdd failure.

[999tigger 10]

What shefstealth and ghost said, personally id just save yourself the hassle and take it to Moz to fix. He can most likely do it whilst you wait.

[swarfendor437 14]

So how are you posting? By netbook/notebook/phone?

 

Worthwhile investing in this:

 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/btmgr/

 

its free and I can't remember if I used it off System Rescue CD or Ultimate Boot CD but you can use as is - you scroll down the window till you see NTFS and press the space bar - if your machine is bootable from the partition it won't need the mbr - use this to launch XP then back up all your data and do a fresh install.

[poppypoppy 10]

Hi Guys

 

 

Thanks for all your replies and advice....I am currently able to use my old computer which is donkeys years old and runs really really slow....I have tried pressing F8 and F12 and it keeps returning me to the same black screen...I do have a recovery disc but it is for the machine I am currently on ...its not just an XP disc I dont think...the machine I am on is Emachines...and has allsorts of programmes installed on it.....the other computer what wont boot up isnt Emachines....will that still work do you know?....theyre both running Windows XP though.....Once again thank you for your advice and help....much appreciated......