Hi all, sorry for the length of this post but I want to be as clear as possible. I've searched all over the web and can't find ANYONE with the same problem, so maybe you all can help: I upgraded a couple of weeks ago from a P3 to a P4. New hard drive too, so I started from scratch, installing XP Pro fresh. I boot off the CD, install XP, everything is perfect. Hooray. Then 2 days ago I take my old parts and use them to upgrade my gf's computer. Put all the parts in, working perfect. I boot off her old hdd and it loads up Win 95 fine. Hooray. She went from a Pentium 133 to now a P3 733, so naturally I want to put XP on her "new" computer. Now the problems start. I set her CD drive to be the boot device, pop in the Win XP Pro disk and get the "NTLDR Missing" error message. FROM THE CD!! There is no hdd involved yet. It's wiped clean. I can't get to the first stages of the WinXP installation because the thing won't boot off the WinXP Pro CD. Fine, maybe it is because the CD drive that is currently in there is really old and can't handle being boot up off of. I take the CD drive from my computer which is what I used to put XP on my old P3 (the same computer!!) and on my new P4, and I put it back on the P3. SAME THING! The exact same CD/mobo/CPU combo that has worked before now gives me the NTLDR Missing error. In frustration, I unplug the booting hdd in the P4 leaving the empty hdd in there (I have 2 in the P4). Just to test the XP CD, I decide I will try to install XP on the P4 again. Guess what? SAME PROBLEM!! 2 weeks ago I installed XP Pro from the same CD to the same computer with the same CD Drive and now I am getting the error. I then went and borrowed XP Pro from a friend, thinking maybe it is a corrupt CD. No luck, same message on all configurations. I have heard of the "NTLDR Missing" message coming up before, but NEVER like this, where I cannot even boot off the installation CD! ANY HELP WOULD BE A GODSEND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Try making a Win XP boot disk from your other XP machine. Then boot from the disk and then try running the CD. Other than that, I would think that maybe your HD is bad. Try replacing that. If all else fails, try loading 98 back on the machine, and installing XP from Win98. -Craig

Fdisk the HDD with a 98 or ME bootdisk and delete the partition(s) then try again. The drive that you intalled XP on was new so it has nothing. "INVALID MEDIA TYPE" is 100% partition and "INVALID DRIVE SPECIFICATION" is 100% the format of the partition...... NTLDR errors are because not all of the kernal files for loading the OS are located in the MBR just as IO.sys, MSDOS.SYS, and COMMAND.COM aren't located in the MBR for a FAT file syatem.

i had this problem, have u got a DVD drive ? if u have put the windows disk in that and see if it installs that solved it for me!