NTLDR is compressed error msg

[unclejoey_ct]

I recently added a 40GB hard drive to my Windows 2000 system -
formatted as a single NTFS partition to avoid the 32GB
limit for FAT32 and gain the benefits (??) of the new file
system. My intent was to xcopy all of the information
from my original hard drive and then swap to make the new
drive the master.

All seemed to go according to plan until I tried to boot
off the new drive. I get an "NTLDR is compressed" error
on start-up. My guess is that this is due to the fact
that the version of the file copied from the original
drive was a boot file for a FAT32 drive, and it is not
compatible with the NTFS drive it is now on.

Are my suspicions correct? Is there any way to work around
this? I would still like to use NTFS if possible. This
would save me from having to reformat as FAT32 and recopy
all the files.

Thanks!!

[sechs]

Basically, you didn't setup the new drive to be bootable. There are hidden files and boot sector information that needs to be added, just as in the old WinDOS days.

You should be able to go into the repair console and use fixboot to repair the boot sector.

[unclejoey_ct]

Thanks for the tips. Unfortunately, I've tried using the Windows setup disks and the recovery console. I've tried both using FIXBOOT and manually copying original versions of ntldr and ntdetect.com from the \i386 directory to the root directory of the drive. Neither method has corrected the problem.

The boot.ini file appears to be OK.

Any further ideas or suggestions?

Thanks again!

[MitaDC]

quick q. In the repair console... if you type fixboot does it erase anything or does it just fix the boot sector...like if u got a virus and it took out part of your windows folder if you used that would it fix it and not delete any important files??

[sechs]

If it recognises your existing installation, you can run a repair. This will undo some operating system updates, but should allow you to access the installation.