Originally Posted by TrevCannon
NTLDR!

im thinking that comes up on the black screen where it boots? should do anyway

because i was manually deleting files cleaning up my a hd & had the comp running for a hour more then had to reboot & that came up!!!

hd useless without the file i had to reinstall xp but i still got all the personal stuff, tunes, photos & what not on it

maybe did it a certain way

i duno

yeah you installed it 'over the top'
i.e, you didn't reformat the drive.
ntldr is a pretty vital file and if it goes it could be bad news for the hdd and could be dying. i'd get it backed up just incase. anyone with abasic computer knowledge should know how to do this. if its an IDE drive (40 pins at the back) rather than a SATA (small electrical contacts) then its the same fitment as your CD drive, unplug the cdrom drive and then boot the machine with both hdd's attached. simply copy the data you want onto the working machine for safe keeping. seriously though, take reasonable care, i make it sound really easy, and it is once you've done it a few times though. there should be a notch on the ide cable so you can only plug it in one way, if not the red side goes to pin 1.