Compaq Deskpro EN ??? Help Please - NTLDR is missing

Help Please, I have two older units and have had nothing but problems

1: How do I find out what model they are, all I know is that they a P
III CPU 1Gig mhz

2: Bios: 686P2 Ver 2.11

I have tried a number of options including working drives but can only get a
single error when ever the PC attempts to boot.

NTLDR is missing

Press any key to restart....

I can boot from the XP cd, but the above errot appears on the restart or
even if I put in a good working system.


I looked at upgrading the Bios, but not able to confirm exactly which model
I have, see point 1: above. I have also tried to make the 3 Compaq boot
disks, and while they look OK they will not work...

Help, I am going crazy.... These two unit were for my kids to do their
school work on and school is only 2 weeks away...

Frustrated Father.

TIA

Start at the beginning. To get into the BIOS setup of a DeskPro EN, power up
the computer and hold down the F10 key. After the system counts up its memory,
the BIOS setup will pop up. You can check all the settings there, especially
the hard disk info, because that seems to be where the problems are.

I will also guess that the systems need replacements for their 3v lithium C2032
coin-sized batteries, about $5 for a pair at Walmart. A failed or failing
battery often gives strange symptoms.

After you've verified BIOS CMOS settings and replaced the batteries, if the
systems won't install XP properly, post another message here. There are a few
things you can do to get an install to go properly.

Do you have unique Certificate of Authentication codes for Windows for BOTH
computers? Are you installing XP Home or XP Pro? How much memory do these
systems have? If less than 256MB, upgrade the memory.

A BIOS update won't help much to solve the problems here, even if one is
available... Ben Myers

On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 15:08:35 +1000, "Mark" wrote:

Help Please, I have two older units and have had nothing but problems

1: How do I find out what model they are, all I know is that they a P
III CPU 1Gig mhz

2: Bios: 686P2 Ver 2.11

I have tried a number of options including working drives but can only get a
single error when ever the PC attempts to boot.

NTLDR is missing

Press any key to restart....

I can boot from the XP cd, but the above errot appears on the restart or
even if I put in a good working system.


I looked at upgrading the Bios, but not able to confirm exactly which model
I have, see point 1: above. I have also tried to make the 3 Compaq boot
disks, and while they look OK they will not work...

Help, I am going crazy.... These two unit were for my kids to do their
school work on and school is only 2 weeks away...

Frustrated Father.

TIA

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone and
ben_myers_spam_me_not @ charter.net (Ben Myers) said
Start at the beginning. To get into the BIOS setup of a DeskPro EN,
power up the computer and hold down the F10 key. After the system
counts up its memory, the BIOS setup will pop up. You can check all
the settings there, especially the hard disk info, because that seems
to be where the problems are.

I will also guess that the systems need replacements for their 3v
lithium C2032 coin-sized batteries, about $5 for a pair at Walmart.
A failed or failing battery often gives strange symptoms.

After you've verified BIOS CMOS settings and replaced the batteries,
if the systems won't install XP properly, post another message here.
There are a few things you can do to get an install to go properly.

Do you have unique Certificate of Authentication codes for Windows
for BOTH computers? Are you installing XP Home or XP Pro? How much
memory do these systems have? If less than 256MB, upgrade the memory.

A BIOS update won't help much to solve the problems here, even if one
is available... Ben Myers


The fix was to understand that Compaq do thing just a little diferent
:-( Picked this up in an archived post somewhere in with a lot of other
questions.

The HD I was using was a 20gig and had been used before with two
partitions... No problem, for the other PC's that I tested it in....

Compaq however would allow me to boot from CD or from the FDD and see the
20 gig in all it's glory but not boot from it ????

ANSWER: The Compaq bios makes it's own assesment of the drive and LBA etc
etc.... Thus it was not seen at boot up as a drive with data on it...

OUTCOME: Save all my data to another drive ( Like I have plenty ...... NOT)
and then XP boot CD with a full clean install.... That is delete all
partitions and start afresh.... the Compaq way..

Mark

For the error message you are getting, try this article link from Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;314057

HH

"Mark" wrote in message
...
Help Please, I have two older units and have had nothing but problems

1: How do I find out what model they are, all I know is that they a P
III CPU 1Gig mhz

2: Bios: 686P2 Ver 2.11

I have tried a number of options including working drives but can only get
a single error when ever the PC attempts to boot.

NTLDR is missing

Press any key to restart....

I can boot from the XP cd, but the above errot appears on the restart or
even if I put in a good working system.


I looked at upgrading the Bios, but not able to confirm exactly which
model I have, see point 1: above. I have also tried to make the 3 Compaq
boot disks, and while they look OK they will not work...

Help, I am going crazy.... These two unit were for my kids to do their
school work on and school is only 2 weeks away...

Frustrated Father.

TIA

It's not just a Compaq problem. Many BIOSes on older pre-Pentium 4 motherboards
do different things with hard drives than one another. Now that there are only
two major motherboard BIOS companies in the world (Phoenix and AMI), there is a
lot more standardization and drives are almost always 100% readable when moved
from system to system.

As a general rule to avoid this sort of problem in the future, scrub a drive
clean when installing a fresh operating system. Delete all partitions, create
new ones, reformat... Ben Myers

On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 22:26:23 +1000, "Mark" wrote:

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone and
ben_myers_spam_me_not @ charter.net (Ben Myers) said
Start at the beginning. To get into the BIOS setup of a DeskPro EN,
power up the computer and hold down the F10 key. After the system
counts up its memory, the BIOS setup will pop up. You can check all
the settings there, especially the hard disk info, because that seems
to be where the problems are.

I will also guess that the systems need replacements for their 3v
lithium C2032 coin-sized batteries, about $5 for a pair at Walmart.
A failed or failing battery often gives strange symptoms.

After you've verified BIOS CMOS settings and replaced the batteries,
if the systems won't install XP properly, post another message here.
There are a few things you can do to get an install to go properly.

Do you have unique Certificate of Authentication codes for Windows
for BOTH computers? Are you installing XP Home or XP Pro? How much
memory do these systems have? If less than 256MB, upgrade the memory.

A BIOS update won't help much to solve the problems here, even if one
is available... Ben Myers


The fix was to understand that Compaq do thing just a little diferent
:-( Picked this up in an archived post somewhere in with a lot of other
questions.

The HD I was using was a 20gig and had been used before with two
partitions... No problem, for the other PC's that I tested it in....

Compaq however would allow me to boot from CD or from the FDD and see the
20 gig in all it's glory but not boot from it ????

ANSWER: The Compaq bios makes it's own assesment of the drive and LBA etc
etc.... Thus it was not seen at boot up as a drive with data on it...

OUTCOME: Save all my data to another drive ( Like I have plenty ...... NOT)
and then XP boot CD with a full clean install.... That is delete all
partitions and start afresh.... the Compaq way..

Mark