Windows 7: NTLDR Is Missing at bootup?

Well this is my first post here, and I'm not entirely sure if it's the right spot for it... so If it's not, please move it for me

Anyways, I installed Windows 7 again after a couple months on XP, and I was just getting everything moved and copied from my secondary hard drive which stores my Acronis backups, and all of my data.

The last thing I did was install Acronis, which wanted me to restart my PC. No problem, it worked just fine. Made a backup, and turned on Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (ASRM)... Everything worked perfect until I restarted for some reason, I don't remember what it was... I got

NTLDR Is Missing, press Alt+Ctrl+Del to restart

So I did, and it came up again, and couldn't find a way to fix it...
Even trying to use "fixmbr" from a Win2000 disc's console didn't work, which usually, it fixes things like that.... I set it down for the night...
Woke up, and had the strange idea of unplugging and removing the hard drive that contains my data files and Acronis Secure Zone.... And wow, It worked...



So my question is how can I plug my hard drive back in and be able to boot up? Remove Acronis? Turn off ASRM? Im sure it's Acronis that's doing this...

Welcome to Seven Forums TsarProdigy.

That's a fairly common issue. Put your data drive back in and check your BIOS and make sure the drive with Windows on it is set as the first boot device in boot order. It might have been trying to boot from the data drive instead.

you could buy an adapter to use your hard drive as a flashdrive via usb and then start up your computer plug in the harddrive via USB and delete the files manually.

Thank you! Unfortunately, my boot order is correct and it still doesn't boot up... It happens before ASRM asks to press F11 to enter it, so that's why i've associated it with that.


Thanks for the reply! I haven't looked into it, but I don't have any free USB ports, and my data drive is a PATA drive, so I don't know if they make one or not...