well i'll admit that my disks are rather old, and they've been crapping out on me for quite a while lately, but this i cannot explain at all.
my pc crashed, and now when it loads, it tells me my norton loader is missing =/. wtf.
both my disks are being seen by the computer so i don't see why there should be a problem.
i can only guess that its mistaking the slave and the master, so maybe i should switch them around? but how is that possible?

the file has become corrupted somehow. Run chkdsk from the recovery console (accessed by booting from your windows XP CD) and it'll get fixed.

eh i meant ntldr.
the thing is, if my hard disk really did die, why is it that it is still detected on boot up?

i'll just hook up my old disks to another pc, copy over whatever i need and buy myself some new disks.

but still, such a pain. now i have to spend a day installing windows again and every thing else =(

your hard disk is fine, ntldr is a windows boot file that gets corrupted rather commonly. Happened last week to my housemate's laptop.

All you need to do is pop in your windows install CD, once it loads you'll have the option of going into the recovery console (usually by pressing R). Once at the recovery command prompt, just type "chkdsk C: -f" obviously if it's not C that is borked replace that with whatever drive isn't booting.

I assure you, no reinstall is needed. That fix has ALWAYS worked for me.

so, its just going to perform a simple checkdisk? for how long will that solve my problem? i've had this problem happen to me 3 times in the last few months. one time it just magically went away the next day, another time i was messing around with the recovery thing, and after one of the reboots it started working again. now it got borked up again.

the reason why i think it must be my hard drive is because this always happens after a hard crash. the system completely freezes up and the light indicator that shows your hard disk working goes completely solid. the past few days i was getting these crashes often.

anyway, i'll try what you have suggested tmr morning and see where it goes.

Now I know why I love you guys/gals - on demand tech support.

well okay, this is funny. i just booted up with my windows cd, and went ahead with the install option, and i am at that screen where it shows you your hard drives and partitions, asking you where to install windows.
well, it shows me that my labels on my disks are messed up.
i have my "system" on partition 'C'. and my "junk" on partition 'D'.

now on this screen, its telling me that D is actually my "system", and C is my "junk".
no wonder it couldn't find the boot loader.
but what the heck do i do with it now? how do i make it read my disk labels correctly?

That may be happening because of corrupt files. You need to do what cheese told you, it will run CHKDSK and FIX/replace the missing files. Cheese is right, trust in the british for once.

JUST ONCE.

lmao.

The chkdsk thing will fix it untill something else occurs to corrupt a system file on your HDD, it could be a program crash, a power outage, whatever. Our house has a very jumpy electrical system, so my pc is crashing a fair amount, I have literally just had to do a chkdsk because a different file got corrupted. PC is fine now.

Another good command if you're having trouble with bootloaders (eg if you uninstall linux and it takes the GRUB bootloader with it, leaving you no way to boot to windows) is "fixmbr". It recreates your master boot record. If you're still having problems after chkdsk, try that.

Yeah, I've had to use fixmbr a few times myself. Not as much as CHKDSK -f though. :-D

Comptia A+ FTW! lol