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What happened?

When your computer starts, the BIOS attempts to find the primary hard drive's active partition to read the first sector for the MBR (Master Boot Record), it uses that info to load the rest of the OS. For Windows NT4/2k/XP the NTLDR (New Technology Loader) takes it from there. If you get the "NTLDR is missing, press any key to restart" what's most likely going on is the BIOS either didn't look for the right drive, didn't find the right partition, it wasn't active, didn't find the MBR, or the MBR didn't list NTLDR in the right place, or the location of NTLDR changed.

If possible, try to change back whatever hardware or software change you just made (this could be as simple as leaving a floppy disk in the drive or you need to recheck the cables). (What if I made new changes that I want to keep?).

Make a NTLDR boot floppy / recordable cd / usb drive to get back into Windows.

The quick test to make sure your OS installation is still good is to create an MBR and NTLDR on a floppy disk and check your partitions, this disk will check many of the partitions for a working windows installation. Here are the instructions to do this:

1. Get a blank floppy (whatever is on it will be erased), and put it into a PC running Microsoft Windows (any version since 95) (If using cd or usb: What if the computer doesn't have a floppy drive?) (What if my backup system is Mac / Linux or another alt OS?).

2. Download fixntldr.exe (you must left click and choose Save, right clicking and choosing Save As... doesn't work with my hosting company) onto a working computer (What if I don't want to download a file from a website I don't trust?).

3. Run the fixntldr.exe file by double clicking it. Click OK to overwrite the blank floppy disc in the working computer, you should see some screens about writing a new floppy disk.

4. Do you remember if the folder you had your Windows installation in was named "Windows"? If you can't remember just keep going (What if it was not named Windows but WINNT like in NT4 or 2000?) .

5. Put the new floppy you have just created into the computer that gets the NTLDR is missing error message, turn the broken computer off.
Using the boot disk in the computer with the "NTLDR is missing" error.

Start back up the broken computer with the floppy in the floppy drive. Once your computer gets past the BIOS screen your computer should try to access the floppy drive and you should see a black screen with white letters that says: (What if I don't see this screen?).

1ST TRY THIS seleccione esto primero
2ND TRY THIS essayez ceci en deuzieme
3RD TRY THIS wahlen Sie diesen Third
4TH TRY THIS selezioni questo fourth
5TH TRY THIS selecione este fifth
6TH TRY THIS seleccione este sexto
7TH TRY THIS essayez ceci en septieme
8TH TRY THIS wahlen Sie dieses achte
9TH TRY THIS selezioni questo nono
10TH TRY THIS selecione este decimo

(I threw in some Spanish / French / German / Italian / Portuguese for international flavor.)

This file is set up to automatically select the "1ST TRY THIS" choice after 30 seconds. Try it first, if it was the wrong selection, you will likely get one of these three errors:

1. Windows could not start because file "<Windows Root>\system32\hal.dll was missing or corrupt

2. Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.

3. I/O Error accessing boot sector file multi(0)disk(0)fdisk(0)\BOOTSECT.DOS

4. Immediate reboot

If you get the immediate reboot or some other weird error, try pressing F8 at the "1st Try This" selection screen, it will give you a prompt where you can select Safe Mode, and then try the "1st Try This" option again. Safe Mode is a special "minimal" version of Windows that doesn't load certain parts of the operating system that might have caused the problem.

One of the choices should eventually boot you back into Windows. (If you go all the way to option 10 and still get errors on startup, try changing boot.ini to windows.ini, then winnt.ini to boot.ini, and run through all 10 possibilities again. (What if none of the options worked?) .
Use windows to fix the boot files on the hard drive.

Once you get back into windows, (backup your important documents first) try to change back whatever you were last doing and boot normally, if that doesn't work, go to the root of your C:\ drive (explained) and rename boot.ini to boot.ini.bak, ntldr to ntldr.bak, and ntdetect.com to ntdetect.com.bak, then copy the files that are on your floppy disk to the root of your C:\ drive (if you used the CD-ROM, download the fixntldr.zip file and use the boot files from there) so that the files are on the root, like C:\ntldr C:\ntdetect.com C:\boot.ini. If it prompts you to overwrite a file, press "Yes". After they have been copied over, be sure to remove the "Read-Only" attribute from the properties of the files. (Right click on a file, choose properties, and uncheck the Read-Only box). Take the floppy out and reboot the computer (you should see the "1st Try This" menu, make the same selection you did before.

If you get back into Windows again, you can change that "1st Try This" menu by going into Start > Control Panel > System > Advanced tab > Startup and Recovery section, Settings button > System Startup; then change the "Default Operating System:" to the selection that worked for you, and change the box that says "Time to display list of operating systems" to however many seconds you want (usually 1 second). Click OK twice. (What if the bootdisk worked, but I can't get into Windows without it?) .