my daughters laptop will not boot up - please help!

cadmus

my daughter has a dell vostro 15" laptop that is 18 months old . she has complained of windows messenger not working (unable to sign in numerous times ) and generally getting slower and slower on everything else.
she runs it on windows xp and macafee security . she has maybe a hundred tracks and a few hundred photos ,apart from that its clutter free.
BIG problem happened yesterday . it just would not boot. there is just a black screen with the words
loading PBR for descriptor 2.... done

A disk read error occured
Press ctrl+alt+del to restart.
it dosnt restart sand just keeps showing the same message !
edit ... now its showing message ntldr is missing .
what can be wrong with it . a few people have said its the hard drive thats shot away ... could that be the problem do you think !
any advice would be greatly appreciated

charley83

Hi,
I'm no expert (my partner works in IT but I'm still pretty useless!). However I googled the error code and it gives you some idea of potential problems and recommendations. I'm sure others will probably have some better advice, but it's worth checking over:

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

aliEnRIK

Try pressing F8 to get into safe mode. Does that work?

aidso

The NTLDR is the boot program for Windows - tells the BIOS where to get the OS from and how to load it so that you can get to your desktop. Since this is missing and/or corrupt it is getting "confused" and just hangs.

You need to find a bootable XP disc and run a repair. It will be one of the choices instead of a full installation. There are other methods where you can copy an ntldr file from someone else and copy through the command prompt, but i'd say your best using the bootable disc option first.

As an alternative, if you're not worried about loosing any data, just do a fresh install instead of the repair.

A


Not to assume anything, but if after failed attempts to boot you simply kill the power or worse, slam the lid shut in frustration, you can cause the read/write heads of the disc to scratch the surface and therefore damage your hard disc. Works the same way as scratching an LP...

desoporp

Hey there...

This one can be real tricky to solve but there's a step by step solution on the website below that i've had success with.

This error appears when NTLDR's attributes have been altered or there is another problem with NTLDR.

To try the most common solution for this, read the following article:

PS: NTLDR is missing. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart. go to proposedsolution .com

If the above does not fix it you may need to follow the Windows Boot Troubleshooting Guide on that site.

Hope this all helps.

John_Gray

It seems pretty unlikely from the error message you get, but are you sure there's no CD in the drive? There's a slight possibility that it might be trying to boot from it first.

But my money is probably on a flaky disk...

aidso

desoporp wrote: »

Hey there...



PS: NTLDR is missing. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart. go to proposedsolution .com

This is why I hate tech support from the likes of Virgin Media. How can he go to that site if the laptop wont boot? Durr

aloiseb

Well, the OP did manage to email in the query! I expect there is anohter computer in the house.

Strider590

It's probably something like a virus has wiped out the bootsector or just deleted the "Boot.ini" file from the drive, this file tells the computer where to find the OS (operating system) partition, when missing it defaults to the recovery partition which does not have an NTLDR, so hence it's flagged as missing.
It's a tough one to fix, because you'd need to write a new boot.ini file. Your best bet is to remove the drive, recover your data and reinstall Windows.