Technical question for major computer geeks

[Martok]

This is a strange one. It's happened 3 times.
I'm running W2k SP2, Abit KT7 RAID, AMD 1.4Gig Athlon, 1 Gig SDRAM, IBM Deskstar 40Gig (C:\).
I have the system running as a "Standard PC", the ACPI is off so I can control the IRQs (needed for MIDI controlers).
The system's running perfect, I shut it off (properly).
When I try to boot it tells me it can't detect "ntldr"
I pull the drive, put it in another W2k system and these files are missing from the root directory.

arcldr.exe
arcsetup.exe
boot.ini
NTDETECT.COM
ntldr

Nothing else is missing. I copy the files from the hosts C:\ - put the drive back, and all is well.
Does anybody have an idea as to what might be causing this - and what to do about it?

I've been building and tweaking computers for some time now, but this one's got me scratching my head.

[marcusaxavier]

Have you tried to run a full scandisk? One thought is that there might be an error in your HD that keeps erasing a certain part of it. Even if the HD is new, that still does not mean that it might not have an error, especially if you have been using it to do a lot of editing.

Another thought is from www.webopedia.com - on the meaning of ntldr :

Short for NT Loader, a program loaded from the hard drive boot sector that displays theMicrosoft Windows NT startup menu and helps Windows NT load.

Often a user will see the message "NTLDR is Missing" after attempting to install Windows 2000 or Windows XP, or upgrade a Windows 95-based or Windows 98-based computer to Windows 2000 or Windows XP. The message appears after the first reboot. This occurs only if Windows 95 or 98 has been installed on a drive with the FAT32 file system.

To correct the problem, the user must boot the computer with a Windows 95 or 98 Startup diskette or another bootable diskette with sys.com on it. Then, at the "A:\>" prompt, type "sys c:" and press "enter." A "System Transferred" prompt should appear and then the user must reboot the computer without the diskette.

[Sefy]

just as marcusaxavier mentioned, was the 2000 installation an upgrade or did you have another partition with 98 on it ? i've seen this happen several times with both 2000 and XP, if they detect you had a 95/98/NT on your system, they will put that annoying NTLDR on the wrong drive, so they can give you "access" to boot from the other OS.

My recommandation (before you install 2000/XP), get Partition Magic, set the 95/98/NT partition as HIDDEN and make the 2000/XP partition as Primary, and that way it will not detect it while it installs, and the NTLDR files will be places in the correct location!

[zzyzzx]

I tried building a system with that MB and the board sucked and broke in a couple of days then I exchanged it for an Intel MB (MV850 I think) and it works much better.

[Martok]

Install is not an upgrade. The drive is formated NTFS.
I've run chkdisk, no errors.
I only loose the files in the root directory - no other files or folders.
??????

[marcusaxavier]

You might look at this as a hardware problem NTL. Even if scandisk does not detect errors, they may still be there in the HD, or a zzyzzx suggested, it might be the motherboard. Although with files missing from the root directory, I would say the HD is the problem, but I could be wrong. If the HD is still under some kind of warrenty, see about getting it swapped out or tested (if they can do that). If you get a "new" HD and the problem persists, then it may be the MB.

The last possible idea that I propose is that if it's not a hardware problem, that you have a virus (or a progam that is acting like one). Update your virus scan, the run a full scan of the HD. Sorry, but those are all of the ideas that I can come up with for now.

[Martok]

Well, I found the culprit - Norton Speed Disk.
It erased just the system root files - nothing else.
I caught in the act with a different computer. If you use Speed Disk, watch your root files, and back them up.
Nobody at Symantec knows anything about this problem (BIG suprise there).
I'll keep looking for why.

[Sefy]

That's strange, which version of Speed Disk did you use ? Norton usually makes pretty good software, and they are usually the first ones to come out with versions optimized for new windows that come out.

[marcusaxavier]

I guess that Speed Disk is a problem. I found a website that has a workaround for it. The site says that it is common in 95/98, but not NT, which W2k is basicly NT 5.0 from my understanding. But here's the website : http://www.spredgar.com/WebHelp/spredgar/norton_speed_disk.htm
I had trouble bringing this link back up in Netscape due to Javascipt problems, so let me know if it works.
The "fix" is on this page:
http://www.spredgar.com/WebHelp/spredgar/required_modifications_to__norton_speed_disk_...windows_95.htm
As the link before, this also have js problems. If you are unable to view these pages, let me know and I'll see if I can get the information off an post it for you.