http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ How-To Geek Forums Topic: NTLDR Not Found en Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:02:00 +0000 http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/ntldr-not-found#post-29402 Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:27:08 +0000 geek860 29402@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>I just sent my laptop into Dell for a new screen. I took my hard drive out to keep it safe, and ended up accessing it as an external twice while the laptop was gone. Today I got my laptop back, re-installed the drive and booted it up. I was immediately greeted with 'NTLDR not found'. I've never seen this before, but I could make out what it was trying to say and immediately suspected the MBR. I restarted and crossed my fingers, to no avail. I tried vista startup repair, but it didn't find any problems.</p> <p>Now, I'm in a unique situation. I upgraded about 2 weeks ago from my stock 160GB HD to a bigger 320GB HD. I used norton ghost to copy over the partitions exactly to the new drive. As such, I have essentially a carbon copy backup on my old drive, save for 2 weeks of emails and files. I actually installed my old drive and that's how I'm using my laptop to write this...</p> <p>The way I see it I have two options:<br /> 1) Find a way to copy the good MBR from my smaller drive to the bigger one, and hope that it works.<br /> 2) Backup my files from my big drive to my small drive, wipe the big one clean, and re-copy the partitions to the big one.</p> <p>Does anyone know of a way to copy an MBR from drive to drive? Instructions would be fantastic.<br /> Also, has anyone been in my situation and can they offer any advice?</p> <p>I called Dell Tech Support and got the policy answer of 'You must reformat'. I've been told that almost 10 times in the past and each time I found a simple fix that rescued it, so I'm not exactly believing them without proof. I understand that this will be more involved than a registry fix but I essentially have nothing to lose.</p> <p>Any ideas?</p> <p>Thanks </p>