Wow, this is a hell of a problem. Here goes: I was using my brother's computer, just doing some downloading off the web & fileshare, from sources I'm reasonably sure didn't contain a virus. I tried to delete a folder (non-essential, just the outdated version of an emu) from "My Documents." A pop-up appeared saying that the application was in use, so I decided to restart the comp to kill whatever process was using the folder. When the computer started back up, after the eMachines logo appeared, I got a black screen saying "NTLDR is missing. Press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart." And this message still appears whenever I restart the system; XP doesn't load and I can't advance any further. My first thought was that the problem could have been created because I had a CD-RW in the drive when I first restarted the computer. I'm not sure if that's the cause or not, but I can tell you that the "NTLDR" message still apears even after removing the disc. I'm not sure what else to do. The F keys aren't opening dialog to start the machine in safe mode like they usually would. IIRC pressing Insert resets the CMOS, but that isn't having any effect either. The factory image disc has the option to restore Win XP, but since it says it will delete the C drive that's a last resort. Starting the computer with the image disc or Norton IS 2004 will give the option to boot from disc, but selecting that option only brings up a prompt saying "A:/" with nothing else happening. Anyway, any help you can give would be great. I just hope my bro doesn't have a heart attack...

I saw this message once before. I bought a second hand hard drive. I did not know if it had an operating system on it, so i connected it to PC (on its own). It came up with that message so i assumed it meant it had no operating system on it (perhaps i assumed wrong). I reformatted and installed windows and it was fine. Not that this helps you at all. I suppose if i was in your position I would connect this drive to another computer, setting it as a slave , or a master on the secondary IDE channel and see if all the stuff you have saved is still on there and save it to something else (like CD) and then reformat and reinstal operating system when drive is back in original system. BUT someone else might have a better way of restoring it. Have you tried searching the www.microsoft.com knowledge base for NTLDR

When was the last time you defragged the drive? This is a well known issue if the drive is severely fragmented. But it can also be from virus/spyware. Boot the XP cd and go into recovery console. Run the utility fixboot which will restore the boot files like ntldr and ntdetect.

This computer has a set of eMachine-provided restore disks rather than the actual Win XP disk, and they apparently don't have the option to use the recovery console. However, I was able to get the machine running by using a boot floopy with ntldr and ntdetect.con on it. It's not all sun & flowers though; even though I overwrote the old ntldr and ntdetect.com with the ones on the floppy, the "NTLDR is missing" message still appears it you try to startup without using the boot disk. Is there a more permanent solution, other than using the boot disk in perpetuity, or backing up everything and reinstalling XP? A patch from the MS site called bcupdate2 hasn't been effective either.