MBR and/or ntldr and MFT screwed...

[dreamliner77]

Well, I went and did something dumb on my recording studio pc (no net connection). I had a 10 GB backup partition that I needed to merge with C:/. So I fired up Partition Magic but that was having issues so I used Paragon Partition Manager.

Applied the changes to merge C and D. Rebooted and the changes where applied and then the dreaded ntldr is missing error message appears. I tried to using recovery console fixmbr and fixboot and neither would work. I can't even read the dir of C: I get an enumeration error. I tried copying ntldr and ntdetect.com to C: and that didn't work either. I tried an repair install but a valid installation is not detected.

I do have an OLD image that I could restore...

Any suggestions?

 

[_kC_]

is an error of the MFT on ntfs systems.... pretty easy fix
in recovery console do
1. chkdsk /r (chkdsk is optional but i recomend you do it first)
2. copy x:/i386/ntldr c:
3. copy x:i386/ntdetect.com c:
4. fixboot
5. fixmbr
6. exit

on lines 2 & 3 x = your cdrom letter
if after that it comes up with a hal.dll missing, then your probably easier doing a repair instal/in place upgrade of windows

 

[dreamliner77]

None of the above commands work. Chkdsk says there is an unrecoverable error. Copy appears to work but just reboots and hangs again, the Fix commands return an error.

I am almost certain it is a file table problem and not a hardware problem. I do get the hal.dll error when using the boot disc from http://tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm

I can't do a repair install because the original installation is not found