Drive causing NTLDR error.

[Bizkitkid2001]

Whenever I hooked up my 8gig drive, i get an NTLDR error and can't get into windows. This happened right after I wrote zeros to a 200gig drive I had gotten and then formatted/partitioned it.(The drive i am talking about inmy other thread that was dead and am sending back to newegg) Well, after the frmat/partition to the dead 200gig, I am unable to start my comptuer with my 8gig drive attached. The sero write program or the WD lifeguard program did nothing to this drive. I never did anything to this drive, infact, most of the time is was unattached from my comptuer while troublshooting the dead 200gig drive.

Is there anything that I can do to get rid of that NTLDR error? I have very very very important files on that drive, and do not have money to do a drive recovery. I do not want to do a format. I have no idea why this drive would be causing this error as I have done nothing to it ecept change it to a different ide channel, which shouldn't effect it anyways.

Thanks,
-Biz

[TM12]

From what I understand, moving to a different channel from the on which it was installed is indeed the problem. By default, it sets the boot.ini file to boot from the C: drive, which is coded by the Primary Master IDE channel controller as 0. Moving it to another channel essentially recodes it and conflicts with the boot.ini and for security reasons, Windows will not boot. I believe booting to the Recovery console and editing the boot.ini to reflect the correct drive ID will fix the problem. But, since I'm not 100% sure of the fix, I've got to leave you in someone else's capable hands.

[Bizkitkid2001]

My C: drive didn't move, only that 8 gig moved. The 8gig is just another hard drive hooked up for storage related.

[TM12]

My bad. I guess I missed something. You're saying you added the 200GB to replace the 8GB but it didn't work. And, the 8 GB was disconnected the whole time and it worked great before the 200? You might need to go into the bios and have it redetect the correct HD parameters and/or check that the drive size is correctly ID'd. If that doesn't work, what is the exact error message?

[Bizkitkid2001]

I didn't replace the 8gig, i bought a controller card so I could keep the 8gig and add the 200gig. While trying to get the 200gig drive to work, i had the 8gig hooked up. But when I found out the new drive had error, i unhooked the 8gig while I tried to see if I could fix the new drive with WD Lifeguard tool. After I couldn't get the 200gig to even post int he bios anymore, i hooked the 8gig back up, but I get that NTLDR error. Even if I move it to an ide port on the motherboard(Back to were it wa sbefore I put in the 200gig drive.

[Bizkitkid2001]

bump

[sechs]

Does it work without the 200GB drive attached? What controller are you using?

[TM12]

Let's jump to the 200gb for a minute. Did you use Lifeguard tools version 10? A colleague had similar problems with a 200 and ONLY the latest version could fix it. Now, months later, it's still good to go. Back to the NTLDR error. I would need to know the specific error message. Also, is the drive recognized correctly in the bios? Is the card still installed? Is the system set to boot from the card or the primary controller? It seems unlikely that you would get the error if nothing had been changed on the disk. It seems more likely that the problem is related to the card. Backtrack through the changes you made and maybe the answer is there.

[Bizkitkid2001]

OK, i got the 200gig drive and the controller card the same day. I hooked up my 8gig and my 200gig to the controller card. After I installed the latest bios forthe controller card, i installed the windows drivers for large drives support and the atapi thingy with service pack 1. Great, at that point the drive was readable, the 8gig worked, and the 200gig was ready to be formatted. Well i went into disk manager and formatted the drive, well, once it got to 100% format an error came up saying that the format was unsuccesful. But the drive was allocated. Well then I went and got the newest version of lifeguard. Well i partitioned and formated the drive, but it had only taken 5 seconds for the program to format/partition, and there was no hard drive activity. So i was a little fishy, and then downloaded the hard drive check utility from WD to see if the drive was bad. Sure enough, it came back reporting there was a read sector error, and that i should send it back for a replacment drive. And windows said the drive was unreadable now, not even ble to be allocated. I tried to recover this drive one more time but doing a zero write to it, then formating/partitioning with the dos version of lifegaurd. I had done that with only the 200gig drive attached. Well after i finished that, i hooked all the drives back up, and then i was getting the NTLDR error. THe specific error was "NTLDR is missing" So I unhooked the 200gig thinking that was causing the problem with it being a dead drive and all, but still got eh error. THen i unhooked my 8gig, and the error went away.

Wierd eh? The new drive crashes, and thenit causes my 8gig not to work

[eagle1]

Have you tested the drive without hooking it up to the new controller card and just do the old method of using the motherboard drive slots and master and slave settings, etc.?