i have a new ssd for my mini9 that i got for christmas. i've swapped drives with my mom's mini9 before, but both already had OSs so there was no problem formatting & reinstalling.

i turn the computer on, hit 2 for setup, tell it to boot to the cd/dvd drive first and get the message "NTLDR is missing". i'm really not sure where to go from here. i can reboot all day long with no change.

i feel like i'm missing something really obvious here...

1/15/2010 10:38:59 AM

http://www.tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm

1/15/2010 10:39:54 AM

ok, i'm gonna try that. will report back.

i've never installed an os to a brand new drive before

1/15/2010 10:46:56 AM

It happened to me on my new SSD drive.

Strangely enough, though, my USB CDROM drive booted fine. What I couldn't do what boot off a USB stick.

1/15/2010 10:56:00 AM

nope, didn't work

oh! i forgot an important piece of info: i can't get the dvd drive to open to let me put the disc in. it won't power on or anything.

[Edited on January 15, 2010 at 11:19 AM. Reason : ]

1/15/2010 11:17:22 AM

what cd are you using?

1/15/2010 11:18:12 AM

boot from a usb flash drive instead?

sounds like it's never even trying to boot from the CD. you can tell it what to try first..but after it doesnt find a CD drive (you said there's no power, right?) it's going to try to boot from the hard drive. aaand that's why you're getting that error.

easiest solution is making a bootable usb flash drive. it's super easy (and you can install windows in literally 5-10 mins) if you have another computer that works.

[Edited on January 15, 2010 at 11:22 AM. Reason : asdf]

1/15/2010 11:20:34 AM

ok i plugged it into my other computer, it works fine. plugged it back into the mini and now it will open. i put the disc in (osx), and it keeps going through all that mess i did with the usb stick, even though it's not plugged in anymore. i still get the ntldr error. i'll try windows and the stick in now.

yeah, my husband via the cat lost my 8g usb drive. i have a 4g one. will that work? i had to buy the 8g to install osx before.

OOH!!! I GOT THE WINDOWS DISC TO WORK! doh

[Edited on January 15, 2010 at 11:25 AM. Reason : ]

1/15/2010 11:22:58 AM

4gb is enough to do it..

1/15/2010 11:27:01 AM

^^^ Mine wouldn't work with a Windows 7 prepped bootable USB drive. It kept saying NTLDR was missing. My only solution was to boot off an XP install CD with a USB CDROM drive.

[Edited on January 15, 2010 at 11:27 AM. Reason : ]

1/15/2010 11:27:41 AM

yay i think it's gonna work! i was really hoping i could just load osx from the start and not have to go xp to osx, but if that's what i have to do then okay. i still need to find my 8g usb stick though

do you know if either works faster, osx 10.5.6 or win7?

[Edited on January 15, 2010 at 11:30 AM. Reason : ]

1/15/2010 11:29:21 AM

Not sure, but I'm running Windows 7 Professional on an SATA II SSD (upgrade) and it runs extremely fast. Boots in 25 seconds, Aero on, etc.



[Edited on January 15, 2010 at 11:39 AM. Reason : ]

1/15/2010 11:37:18 AM

crap. it just rebooted by itself while installing xp. i don't remember a computer ever doing that once it was done. i'm not sure if it finished. when it came back up it said there was a hardware error



what do i dooooo?

---

it didn't finish. it was still formatting. crap crap crap

[Edited on January 15, 2010 at 11:40 AM. Reason : ]

1/15/2010 11:37:50 AM

apparently, there's a hardware error

1/15/2010 11:42:50 AM

um yes. this is obvious. thank you. so helpful

1/15/2010 11:43:42 AM

^^^reboot with the xp cd, delete the partition, try again

[Edited on January 15, 2010 at 11:44 AM. Reason : ]

1/15/2010 11:43:57 AM

thank you god. i just finished loading xp again, and it's now gone into the blue, windowsxp setup screen. i won't call it fixed yet, if i do it'll break again

1/15/2010 11:48:38 AM

yw, it should work

1/15/2010 11:52:10 AM