NTLDR is a boot loader for all Microsoft Windows NT operating system and windows XP and Vista. NTLDR allows the user to choose which operating system to boot from at the menu; for NT and NT-based operating systems, it also allows the user to pass preconfigured options to the kernel. NTLDR is an essential part of the system, that’s why you can't boot your pc without this file. When your computer starts, the BIOS attempts to find the primary hard drive's active partition to read the first sector for the master boot record it uses that info to load the rest of the OS. For Windows NT4/2k/XP the MBR is pointed to NTLDR (New Technology Loader) and it takes it from there.
Sometimes when we start our PC, we can get error such as: “NTLDR is missing, press any key to restart” and our PC doesn’t boot due to this error. For Operating System to boot properly, system files required to be safe. In case of Windows NT / 2000 / XP these files are: NTLDR, ntdetect.com, boot.ini, located at the root folder of the bootable volume, Registry files. If these files have been deleted, corrupted, damaged by virus, Windows will be unable to boot. You'll see error message "NTLDR is missing".
There is lots of other cause which can lead to this error and different workaround for every cause. Here we will discuss all d cause which leads to this error message. Most common cause is your PC is trying to boot from a hard drive or flash drive that is not properly configured or from non-bootable source. In this situation you can check your bios setting and change BIOS setting to default or go to 1st first boot device option and select hard drive as your 1st boot device.
2nd possible cause is corrupt windows registry, misconfigured files or corrupt hard drive sector or Master Boot record. In this scenario you can replace your boot.ini file or you can load NTLDR file using windows XP or bootable CD. If you are using the cd or usb solution, copy the boot.ini, NTLDR, and ntdetect.com files to My Computer > Local Disk C:\ > and overwrite whatever files might be there, then right click each file, choose properties, uncheck the Read Only attribute, and click OK. You can get rid from this error by installing new copy of windows. For this you must boot your PC with windows CD and format the system. Then you should install new copy of windows.
It's possible your computer's hard disk drive may have a corrupt boot sector and/or master boot record. These can be repaired through the Microsoft Windows Recovery console by running the fixboot and fixmbr commands. If you don’t have backup of your data and you couldn’t recover your data by recovery console, you can use Stellar Phoenix data recovery software which can recover your data very easily. These softwares scan your hard drive and recover your data by various algorithms.
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