johnmcarter
Member
My NTLDR is missing. What is it and how could I have lost it. Even more important is how do I get it back?
Have you took a look to see if the NTLDR file is even there (in the root of the C: drive)?
There are cases (it happened to me once) that the NTLDR file IS THERE where it is supposed to be,but the error occurs anyway even if the file (in the case if it's damaged) was replaced by new one.The cause is usually that the operating system's registry is messed up and it cannot link to that file properly since it links to God knows where.
I don't recommend you to fix it through the registry first because it's complicated and second you will need to use special tools to access the registry since you cannot even boot to the OS because of this error.
Also "upgrading" from 32-bit OS to 64-bit OS is not a good idea.Upgrading from 32-bit OS to newer 32-bit OS or upgrading from 64-bit OS to newer 64-bit OS usually do not cause any problems,but upgrading 32-bit OS to newer 64-bit OS is not the right way of doing things.In this particular case you should have make a clean installation of your 64-bit Windows 8.1.
Also WINDOWS REPAIR procedure cannot fix NTLDR issue.That can be solved by booting from your Windows disk and then entering in the CMD and copying it manually from there.Or of course you can do it on other ways such as using the live Linux Ubuntu disk.
Also your error can be caused (as others stated) that your BOOT ORDER is improperly configured either in the BIOS or somewhere else and therefore the OS tryes to boot from the hard drive or it's partition which is incorrect.
Cheers!
This from Microsoft..
If your PC has a 64-bit capable processor (CPU) but is currently running a 32-bit version of Windows, you can install a 64-bit version of Windows 8.1, but you'll need to buy it as a DVD and perform a clean installation. You won't be able to keep any files, settings, or apps when you update from a 32-bit to a 64-bit version.