NTLDR is missing - having trouble with recovery console

[MrRobin]

Calling all techies!

Friend has asked for help with knackered old Packard Bell laptop.

Won't boot, just says NTLDR is missing. I can get into BIOS if need be. I have put in a WinXP installation CD and can boot from that into Win setup and get to the menu where it says Press R to repair a windows installation... great... it takes me to the next screen and asks for an admin password.

Friend has no idea what this is. I've tried the password she uses to log onto windows (the only account) but it doesn't work. I have tried googling and there are instructions to remove the need for a password but you need to edit the registry which is obv. no good for me.

Any ideas how to overcome this? Would I be able to run a chkdsk from another machine if I remove the hard drive? The screws are a real bugger to remove, I will probably have to drill them out so don't want to unless it's worth it...

Thanks!

[MrRobin]

Stupid question... I need to go in via the minint partition... duh..

Mod, feel free to delete thread!

[MrRobin]

I was going to suggest taking the floppy diskette out of drive A:. .

Worked for me.

I did check all of that at first, unfortunately it looks as though the boot sectors are completely fubar'd.

I ran chkdsk and then ran bootcfg /rebuild but neither of these worked... Not sure where to go next...

[Support Monkey]

take the drive out and run it in a dock/another PC/remote hard drive case, remove all your data and wipe it assuming the drives ok,

[MrRobin]

take the drive out and run it in a dock/another PC/remote hard drive case, remove all your data and wipe it assuming the drives ok,

Yeah that's the last resort option, was hoping for a quick fix. Thanks.