JSI Tip 2190. When you upgrade or install over W9x, you receive 'NTLDR is missing'?

Jerold Schulman

March 23, 2000

1 Min Read
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If your Windows 9x computer is using FAT32, and you recieve:

NTLDR is missing
Press any key to restart

when you upgrade or install, you probably cloned your W9x install and did not adjust for the new drive geometry.

This is most likely true if the partition is greater than 7.8GB.

W9x ignores the head value of the FAT32 BIOS Paramater Block (BPB), but Windows 2000 uses it.

To reslove the problem, you need to fix the Heads (sides) value in the BPB.

The easiest way to fix this is:

1. Boot the W9x startup disk, the one that contains Sys.com.

2. At the command prompt, type:

sys c:

This rewrites the boot code, with the correct drive geometry.

3. Restart W9x and perform the upgrade.

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