NTLDR is Missing Error Message When Starting Computer

After you copy many files to the root folder of a boot volume that uses the NTFS file system, you may receive the following error message the next time that you restart the computer:

NTLDR is missing
Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart.
If you remove the files that you copied to the root folder, the master file table (MFT) allocation index does not reduce to its original size.

CAUSE

This problem may occur if the MFT root folder is severely fragmented. If the MFT root folder contains many files, the MFT may become so fragmented that an additional allocation index is created. Because files are mapped alphabetically in the allocation indexes, the NTLDR file may be pushed to the second allocation index. When this occurs, you receive the error message that is described in the “Symptoms” section of this article.

Typically, files are not written to the root folder. This condition may occur if a program regularly creates and removes temporary files in the root folder, or if many files are copied to the root folder by mistake.

There are two ways to fix this problem:

1. If you are running Windows XP or Windows 2000 create a boot disk (using another computer) then update your version of Windows.

2. You can also try running the BCUpdate2 utility.

Further information on creating a boot disk will be in a later article…