[sf-lug] NTLDR is missing

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Lx Rudis (lx_rudis at sbcglobal.net):

> last night i powered up my dual-boot machine to be
> greeted by the three words in my subject line.
> 
> the machine runs ubuntu and Xp.  recently i've been
> experimenting with dyne:bolic, and although i did
> attempt a 'nest' a few weeks ago, i usually run
> dyne:bolic from a live CD.
> 
> on the Xp side, the last thing i did was scan for
> spyware after updating my definitions - machine was
> clean.
> 
> is it possible that i've corrupted my MBR by
> dualbooting?

My recollection is that NTLDR lives in the root directory of the
XP/whatever filesystem, along with boot.ini.  Therefore, this symptom
would seem to have nothing to do with your MBR, which lives in sector
zero of your hard disk.

What you're seeing is the Microsoft boot sector code in the initial
sector of /dev/hda1 or wherever complaining that it's not finding NTLDR
in the root directory as expected.

Reference:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_startup_process