Windows Vista Win 7 "NTLDR is missing", reinstall vista problem

Joined
Feb 27, 2009
I used to have Vista on my Dell XPS m1530, but I installed Windows 7 over it a few weeks ago. It worked fine until now.
After the BIOS loading screen, it just says "NTLDR is missing. Press any key to restart". I searched for solutions to this online, but none of them worked.

I then tried to reinstall Vista over Windows 7. At the partition select screen, I had three partitions, two of which are too small, so I chose my main partition (which has 158GB free). When I selected the partition, it said "Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation" I chose to reformat the partition with the hope that it would get rid of that message, but now it still says "Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation"

On top of that it still says "NTLDR is missing" if I don't boot into a cd.

What should I do???? arhhhh!!!:frown:
 
The problem is that I've reformatted the hard drive, so even if I fixed the NTLDR problem, there's nothing to boot. Any suggestions for how to get the vista disk to install on the hard drive?
 
Can you not remove all the partitions so only one remains?
 
Probably something that Dell has put on... Sometimes they use partitions like these to store an image of the os your using in case you want to re-set the machine back to factory conditions.
 
I'm not sure wether to call out a Dell technition or not... I'm good with computers but I've never really dealt with partitioning and reformating before.

So you reckon I should delete those two partitions, then attempt to reinstall Vista? Or should I format the remaining partition before I attempt a reinstall?
 
Well as long as you have a vista install disk and your sure there's nothing of value on the small partitions then I'd just create one large partition. You could then reformat and have a clean crisp version of vista.
Mu mom's HD was the same and that was a Dell. It originally ran XP, so she cleaned the HDD including the small patitions and installed vista (well I did it actually). Why not try a bit of googling on the areas your unsure about? I always do that if I'm unsure about something...
 
i had the same problem after an update and what happened was my boot device got changed from my hard to a usb device i had in my computer. i didnt use the windows cd i just went into bios or setup menu (F2) and changed my boot device and everything is fine!!!
 
@ daddijonez:
I checked that in the BIOS, its still trying to boot from the hard drive.

I'll try deleting the two small partitions, then reformatting, then reinstalling.
If this for some reason doesn't work, do you reckon the Dell technicians can fix the computer completely again? I reckon they can, it's not like im messing with the BIOS or anything, just the hard drive. I just don't want to completely ruin my computer in an attempt to fix it.

By the way, thanks for the replies kemical.
 
No problem....:)

Anyway you should be fine.......Good luck with the install.
 
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