NTLDR is missing in the middle of first xp install

[armadaoptimus]

I hope someone here can help....I just purchased an asus P4C800 Deluxe MB and P4 2.3 GHZ chip and all the fixings. Problem is after windows xp formated my brand new out of the box hard drive and began copieing the install files it crashed. I then rebooted and all i can get is NTLDR is missing press cntrl/alt/delete to restart. This is unlike any of the other NTLDR's I have seen...HELP ME!

You should wipe the drive and try installing again. Most times crashing during install is caused by RAM faults. Try changing RAM, or recofiguring your RAM in the BIOS to make sure it's correct.

It can't find NTLDR becasue uit didn't write the MBR before it crashed, most likely. So just wipe the drive (reformat), and check your RAM config, and try again.

What RAM do you have, BTW?

Cheers
mick

Oh, and Welcome to TechIMO!!

[armadaoptimus]

I have golden dragon PC3200 Ram by geil. I would like to reboot but the dan thing won't even take a boot disk (floppy) . I see the floppy drive light come on but it says insert disk. Is there anyways to initiate a format from the bios becasue that is the only hing that seems to work.

Something's messed up. Can you enter the BIOS and change the boot drive manually? then boot from floppy?

Sounds like it's only trying to boot from HDD.

Cheers
Mick

[armadaoptimus]

Ya I can.....but get this.....before the error it was saying no ide found.....bios no installed...yes I could still get into bios and in the bios screen it detected everything....right now I have the floppy drive and hard drive hooked up with floppy as primary boot.

Oh, is the boot floppy good? And, can you boot from the CD? Then you could reformat drive and reload that way.

You might disable booting from the HDD altogether if it won't let you in at first.

Cheers
Mick

Outa curiousity, what chipset is that mobo? Had a friend with a new P4 system that kept dropping the IDE drives out at boot for no know reason. His is a 865 chipset, I think.

Cheers
Mick

[armadaoptimus]

I can use the floppy but i ave tried 2 differant boot disks and it isn't accepting either. The cd drive WAS plugged in but it wasn't booting from that either. This is so screwy.....bare with me I am gonna check something else....brb

[armadaoptimus]

875p chipset.....i plugged in cd only and when i try to make it boot from that it says reboot and select proper boot device.
or insert boot media and press any key...win xp is in the drive

[armadaoptimus]

no drives attached to fasttrack controller...bios not installed it says before the error every time