I forgot to put the xp cd in with the floppy and now its saying that ntldr is missing... I put the xp cd in just now and its still saying the same thing. What does ntldr missing mean?

NTLDR is missing
Simple "ntldr is missing" fix with boot floppy, CD-R, or USB flash


Just read through link above and go through the process step by step

Its not missing anymore, once I took the floppy out, but its just not letting me do much of anything, its just freezing too soon for me to even try to fix it. Do you think it might be a hardware malfunction and if so then what could be causing it?

Will it boot to cd rom at all? If so, you can put in new drive and install xp from scratch and then once system is up, put the drive you are having problems with in as a slave drive so you would be able to get information and files from it

I'll give it a try but it might freeze on me... we'll see I guess

If it freezes with a different drive in it, it would be sometihing with hardware, if it goes through and is able to install xp, the original problem would be a software issue
Probably wouldn't recommend changing themes though, I tried it once and did not goes as planned but didn't lose system, so I personally just keep my theme the way it is just to be safe.

All right so I put in a different hd and it still froze up on me and I know nothing is wrong with that hd too so obviously it lies in hardware elsewhere. I was thinking it might have something to do with the power supply since its freezing on me, that or the processor are the only two things I can possibly think of it being. I have an extra power supply that hopefully is good still. I'm going to switch them out and see how that goes. I'm just not leaning towards it being the processor simply because I had it in another computer today to test that theory and it never froze on me. Once I get done with the power switch I'll let you know if that worked, but give me feedback on this, what you think it could be hardware wise.

Memory, if you have more than one memory stick installed, take one out to see if it will boot, if it does it would indicate the memory you took out may be bad

If same thing happens with the stick you tookd out, put that one in and take the other one out, basically testing to see if one of the 2 memeory sticks may be bad, if you have 2

OK I just put in the other power supply, I'm about to test it out, if that isn't the problem then I'm going to test the ram out which I'm assuming that's what you mean by memory sticks. If so then I have three, one half gig, and two quarter gigs. Update you in a minute

Sorry, yes the ram - just test them out to see if system will start with one of them to try and eliminate problem fi it is ram

Wouldn't know from there - it would be memory, processor, or the drive cable not seated properly, when you put in the new drive, did you set it as master and the cd rom to first boot device and that the hard drive is seen in the BIOS

But you are getting to the boot menu indicating it would be a software issue/Operating System issue

I tested the power, the ram, both cd drives I have, my floppy drive, and I took out all of my add ons except for my graphics card. That's the only thing I haven't checked out yet, I do have a crappy processor I could check out too. Let me do that and I'll get back at you in about 5 minutes

Another thing to check is take the hard drive to another computer to see if it would boot all right, if so you could eliminate the software as a problem and you would know it is hardware realated, if you put the hard drive in another system and it freezes, it would be the hard drive

Could I slave my hd to this computer and try to do anything to help change it if it is the hard drive? If so then all I do is put it to slave and pop it on the computer right?

The only thing you could do by making it a slave drive is copy information off it, no way to change any system settings or uninstall software - it would just be seen as a storage drive

You could replace the one you are using now with the problem drive to see if it would boot or not, if it would boot, you would probably just be looking at getting a new motherboard for the other PC as the components seem to work, but you would have to confirm that the problem drive can boot in another machine

If it boots in another machine, it is a hardware issue
If same thing happens with it freezing on another machine, it is the operating system on the hard drive

If it turns out to be the operating system, change the drive to slave and change jumper on the hard drive to make it a slave drive and put in PC you are using now and then in windows explorer, format the drive

After drive is formatted, change jumnper back to master drive and put in problem PC and boot with xp cd and install XP


So, try above, will problably take you quite awhile but take your time, what you are looking for is to see where the problem is at - is it the hardware or the operating system on the hard drive

I have to call it a night right now but I will check to see what you got going on in morning.

All right, I am currently copying any files I want to keep to this hd, the messed up on is the slave drive right now, it keep restartin instead of freezin so I'm going to format it and try what you said, I'll post about it later once I do it.