I installed XP Pro onto a SATA drive and all was OK until I tried to install the AC97 audio driver, when the PC rebooted itself and I was left with the message 'NTLDR is missing. Press any key to restart'. Without doing anything else, if I then connect the SATA cable to one of the three remaining mobo SATA connectors and switch back on, it tries to boot Windows normally. I can boot fully in safe mode and I uninstalled anything audio related but when trying to boot normally again it shows a blue screen with white writing but this is too brief to read and the machine reboots with the NTLDR message. Again, if I change the cable to another connector (without having to do anything else), it tries to boot Windows and we go through the same thing again. Anyone got any ideas? I can fit a normal IDE drive and everything, including ac97, installs properly and the PC works fine. But if I try the SATA drive I always get that problem. It seemed to be working OK until I tried to install the audio driver. The mobo is a brand new Foxconn NF4K8AC-RS AMD939 board with Athlon 64 CPU and the SATA drive is a brand new 80GB Maxtor DiamondMax SATA150 unit. If anyone can shed any light on this I'd be grateful - it's really doing my head in now...

It's possible your computer's hard disk drive may have a corrupt boot sector and/or master boot record. These can be repaired through the Microsoft Windows Recovery console by running the fixboot and fixmbr commands NTLDR troubleshooting and the microsoft technet article on NTLDR Microsoft technet MSI 845e mb 1 gb ram and a p4 2.4n running xp ,win 2000 advanced server and win 98 SE alot to learn and I know so little !!!!

I think I may need to just stick to the normal IDE drive. I've repaired and re-installed over and over and now it's doing it when I install the mobo drivers, BEFORE I go anywhere near audio drivers. It definitely doesn't like this SATA drive...

Sorry to hear you're having so many problemx, Was trying to come up with something else It could be , and , Nothing comes to mind other than bios settings , or SATA drivers. What brand of SATA drive is it anyway? What version of Operating system is the disk, IE:pre sp1 or sp2, There should be , (IF there is 4 connections. ) numbers on the SATA connections , number one should be the only one for a single drive, It may be that the board doesn't support SATA without being in a RAID array, Haven't looked up the MB so can't tell you at the moment , Just sounds like some bios setting isn't set right , MSI 845e mb 1 gb ram and a p4 2.4n running xp ,win 2000 advanced server and win 98 SE alot to learn and I know so little !!!!

The SATA drive is an 80Gb Maxtor DiamondMax SATA150 unit (on Foxconn NF4K8AC-RS AMD939 mobo with Athlon 64 CPU) and I am installing XP Pro (SP2). What I can't understand is that it installs perfectly OK (on any SATA port, but I was aiming to use the first) and I can reboot OK. But when I install mobo or audio drivers, it loses contact with the drive and nothing shows up in BIOS (normally lists the drive next to SATA Master 0, or whichever port I connect to). Even if I go through the OS setup again, XP can't find any connected drives. So I connect the SATA cable to another port and when I switch back on, it immediately tries to boot from the XP installation again. But if I don't boot in safe mode, it reboots half way through startup and then loses contact with the drive again (NTLDR is missing...). In safe mode, startup completes and I get a desktop. But if I reboot and allow it to startup normally, I lose the drive when it reboots itself. On a normal IDE drive, everything installs and the PC works perfectly. Boots every time and no problems. Strange...

foxconn drivers and bios The only thing that I can suggest is that you make you make sure you have the latest BIOS and drivers for the Operating system Other than that ,From what I have seen on the website is that It should work fine, Don't know what it could be otherwise, other than the BIOS settings and drivers,, Making sure you have the latest BIOS and drivers that are built for the OS your using , Being that it's a 64 bit CPU , could be the cause , with WinXP Don't know what else to tell you,,, MSI 845e mb 768 mb ram and a p4 2.4n running xp ,win 2000 advanced server and win 98 SE alot to learn and I know so little !!!!

Yes, it's a weird one. And thanks for the info about drivers, etc., but I've already updated the BIOS & downloaded all the latest mobo drivers, but it's still the same. The same h/w works fine if I use a normal IDE drive, though, so I assume the possible Athlon 64 /Win XP issue won't apply. I guess I'll just have to stick with the IDE drive... Thanks for your time, anyway - much appreciated.