Ok well about a year and a half ago my friend wanted to upgrade his BIOS because they were quite old, so I went ahead and did that for him. I made sure everything was right and went ahead with it. Everything went ok and the computer restarted and booted up into XP with no problems. I resarted however making no changes in Windows and this time it gave me 'NTLDR is missing' so I went into the BIOS to make sure everything was set right and it was. I made no changes and exited the BIOS and it booted up into Windows no problem. Later on he called me and told me it happened again and I told him how to get by it. He only did it once and it worked from then on for almost a year straight. Then about a month ago it started doing it again every time and we couldn't get around it. I researched it and tried literally everything. I tried replacing 'NTLDR' 'ntdetect.com' and tried replacing 'boot.ini'. Made sure 'boot.ini' was correct, and it was. Everything was fine so I don't understand why it wasn't working. I went through the whole 'fix ntldr' program too and I was able to get into Windows with the disc but could not fix the problem. The disc worked though so he just kept using that. Then a few days ago it stopped working and his computer gave him the message 'hal.dll missing' and he couldn't get his computer to work again. Well he had been without a computer for a few weeks so he said I should just go ahead and format and reinstall so I did. Everything went fine and it could boot into Windows Xp again with no problems. Then it started doing it again today. What the hell? I completely reformatted.. this should not be happening. Well the obvious first step would be to reflash with old bios, but I don't know what BIOS he had before. Also, I reflashed with newer BIOS and it still gives me the error. What is going on. Can anyone please shed some light on this..

Go here and run through this list of NTLDR is Missing fixes...

Dam I was just about to post the same link. wondering if it has somthing to do with the hard disk configuration.

I went through the entire list before. None of them fixed it.

I haven't tried replacing the cable though so I'll go ahead and try that.

dunno if this has been mentioned before, but I've used it dozens of times, works for me....

Simple "ntldr is missing" fix with boot floppy or CD, then fix HD

Yeah I tried that. Like I said in the original post, it gets me back into Windows but does not actually fix the problem. I have to boot from the CD every time.