I formatted and...

[TheDarkHorizon]

I have a strange problem. I formatted my C drive which previously had Windows 2000, and now whenever I boot up without a bootdisk, it tells me to insert a valid system disk. (this is normal.) When I insert my Windows ME bootdisk, it says "NTLDR is missing.". I can't even get into the DOS prompt. Any solutions?

[rugger]

Make sure your CMOS (BIOS) settings are set to boot the floppy drive first, instead of the hard drive

[ayoub_ibrahim]

hmm, did you fdisk & make an active partition before you formatted?

[SteveC]

"NTLDR is missing"

Means that the disk you're booting from (be it a floppy or hdd) has been formatted in either win2k or NT and hasn't got the required system files to boot from.

You sure you haven't formatted your winme floppy at some point?

[bacon]

Did you format the boot partition?

Try formatting by using fdisk /mbr command to erase the boot partition. Using a Win98 startup disk.

[TheDarkHorizon]

I can't get into DOS, and I find it strange that it won't even load my WinME bootdisk. Would using a Win98 bootdisk make that much of a difference? When I formatted, I was in FAT32 and I didn't FDISK.

[rugger]

Try a different boot disk

Try booting from the win-me cdrom (if it does bootup)

Also try a different floppy boot disk. It sounds like that one is broken.

[EdSki]

Well first try booting from winme cd and start winme setup, like Rugger said. If winme setup won't overwrite you bootsector (it may not) you will get the same error message again when setup reboots...

If this happens, boot from a 98 boot floppy (I'm not sure if you get a dos prompt with a winme flop, I never used a winme boot floppy).

Again like Rugger said make sure it's the first boot device you machine uses (set this up in you bios)

When booted from the flop, run the following command from a:\ :

Sys c:

System will be transefered, then retry the winme setup

Grtz,
Ed

[Wombat]

WinME overwrites the boot sector without asking. At least, it does when Linux is installed.


It sounds like your boot order in the BIOS has the HD loading before the floppy though.