NTLOADER is missing.

December 28, 2006 9:20 PM

I have two SATA drives installed on my machine. My computer works fine except for the fact that roughly every two or three weeks my computer will fail to boot with a message reading "NTLOADER is missing. Press CTRL ALT DEL to reboot." I can fix the problem temporarily by opening up my computer case and swapping the drives around on the motherboard (putting the cable for Drive 1 into SATA 2 and vice versa), at which point Windows will boot up fine and function without a problem but as I said, within the space of two to three weeks, the problem comes back. Hope me, please! System specs inside.

The System.

* AMD Athlon64 x2 4600 operating at 2.6Ghz with a 512k Cache.

* Motherboard: ASUS M2N32-SLi Deluxe.

* Big cool case with lots of room inside with an internal 430watt power supply.

* 1x Western Digital 320GB 7200rpm SATAII KS 16meg Cache.

* 1x Western Digital 320GB 7200rpm SATAII KS 8meg Cache.

* 2GB RAM

* Video Card: NVIDIA 7950-GT

* Running WinXP with SP2 and all the latest hot fixes.

I'd really like to know why this is happening (so if I need to go to the computer shop due to any broken hardware I can speak with some authority) and, if possible, a solution that can stop this from happening ever again. Any and all help is, of course, greatly appreciated.

posted by Effigy2000 to computers & internet (14 comments total)

Sounds like your BIOS is forgetting the boot order. You can go into the BIOS and specify the logical ordering of discs; when it fails, check that out (see if it changed) and swap accordingly instead of fiddling with cables.

You could argue without too much trouble that the motherboard is faulty though upgrading the BIOS to the latest version may fix it.
posted by polyglot at 9:34 PM on December 28, 2006

Are your two drives mirrored via RAID 1 (if I remember correctly?)?
posted by homodigitalis at 10:07 PM on December 28, 2006

Definitely sounds like a boot order problem to me, though it's a curious one, since it's apparently finding an appropriate MBR and boot record for XP, but choking at NTLDR. Specify the order in the BIOS and see where that leaves you.
posted by holgate at 11:15 PM on December 28, 2006

"Are your two drives mirrored via RAID 1 (if I remember correctly?)?"
posted by homodigitalis at 4:07 PM AEST on December 29

I don't know. How could I check?
posted by Effigy2000 at 11:55 PM on December 28, 2006

As a last, last, last, resort, check your power supply. I'm a little hesitant to tell you my story since there are enough differences here to make it nearly useless. But I think I've had this problem before.

I used to have a mini-itx with 2 PATA drives and a DVDR drive. The case PS was also small, less than 200watts and probably closer to 100watts. Off a cold boot, my boot drive didn't get enough energy to spin up fast enough. But if I immediately hit the reset button 2 or times, somewhat emulating a warm boot, there would be enough power for everything to run. And my sysetm would boot fine without complaining about NTLOADER missing. Later, I even connected one HD via a second PS and my system didn't have a problem with a cold boot.

You didn't mention the of your PSU but I'd assume it's enough. And switching IDE cables like that seems like a very odd solution to a weak PS problem. So, check the PS if one else give you the solution.
posted by Cog at 12:08 AM on December 29, 2006

if the drives are mirrored then you would probably only have one drive letter for both of them on your computer
ie c:
if they are not then you would have atleast two drive letters for them
c: e: ect...
posted by Iax at 1:51 AM on December 29, 2006

Then no, they aren't mirrored.
posted by Effigy2000 at 2:42 AM on December 29, 2006

couldn't it be a physical problem? faulty connectors on the motherboard, or faulty cables?
posted by ascullion at 2:53 AM on December 29, 2006

I used to have this problem- do you have an old windows installation on the second drive, or even just a WINDOWS folder? Sometimes my motherboard would get confused as to which drive contained the actual windows installation it was supposed to boot- I deleted the old install off the second drive and everything's been fine since.
posted by bobot at 7:11 AM on December 29, 2006

As a last, last, last, resort, check your power supply.

Or even as a first resort. A classic sign of a failing or overloaded power supply is "one drive works, two don't."

Another is "pull out half the RAM, and it boots -- doesn't matter which half."

Lots of power supplies have inadequate filter capacitors, others have gotten burned by the capacitor plague The right way to check for a failing power supply is to open it up, WITHOUT TOUCHING ANYTHING INSIDE, and look at the output caps. There will be a bunch of them. If the tops are bulging, they're toast. Yes, if you know what you're doing, you can swap them. I'm not going to tell you how, because if you have the knowledge to do so, you already know what you need to do. They're not that dangerous, but the HV side has a capacitor that will cause you quite a bit of pain if you screw up.

The simpler test is to swap in a new power supply.

If you're dealing with a perpetual upgrade machine, you may have just added one too many parts and the PS can't handle the load. Pentium 4s draw a staggering amount of power, dual core isn't helping, Faster RAM and more of it isn't helping, and I'm not even going to start in on video cards. That's why there are so many wires to the motherboard now -- all these things are drawing power, the voltages are fixed, so more draw means more current. Worse, the trend of lower voltage + higher power draw means higher current draw.

In the Pentium II days, a 350W power supply was huge, in the modern era, a 350W power supply might not even boot the machine.

Power supplies don't last forever -- they need lots of capacitance to keep the power clean, the only way to get it today is electrolytic, and all electrolytic caps lose capacitance (and increase resistance) over time.

Finally, I think you need a new power supply because I'm thinking 450W isn't enough. Specs on that CPU say 98W idle, 147W peak. nVidia rates that video card at 82W. That's 229W in the CPU die and Video card alone -- well over half your power budget, without counting anything on the motherboard, RAM, drives (rule of thumb, 5400RPM=5W, 7200=10W, 10K=20W, 15K=30W.) and peripherals.

It wouldn't take much loss of capacity to have the system seem problems.
posted by eriko at 8:10 AM on December 29, 2006

For the record, I have confirmed that the boot order was being forgotten. I have tried the simplest answer first and installed the latest BIOS upgrade. I'll report back in 2 weeks to see if the problem is still around.
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:39 AM on January 12, 2007

Well, it's been only two days and the problem has come back. I was using Windows when the system locked forcing a hard reboot, upon which, yep, NTLOADER was missing.

The only two suggestions remaining in this thread at the moment are a) Get a bigger power supply and b) the Motherboard is faulty in some way. What's the more likely of the two at present, do y'all think?
posted by Effigy2000 at 2:57 PM on January 13, 2007

Also possible: CMOS battery on the motherboard is dead. Are you losing all the stored data in the BIOS when this happens (e.g. system clock, etc.)? If so, try replacing the small watch battery on the motherboard.
posted by Partial Law at 3:19 PM on January 13, 2007

Well, I think the problem is well and truly sorted now.

I finally got sick of the problem (which had been occurring more frequently than once every fortnight) and took it to the repair shop. I explained the symptoms and the guy immediately suspected a faulty SATA cable. He swapped them over on the spot and I went home.

That was almost two weeks ago and the system has been running smoothly ever since. It is probably too early to say for certain but it seems as though the problem has been solved. And what more, it was ascullion up-thread who suggested it may be faulty cables. So until I'm shown otherwise (via another NTLOADER error) I'm giving him/her best answer and marking this resolved. Hurrah!

Thanks for your help everyone!
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:41 AM on February 19, 2007