Doing the same thing over and over -- but expecting different results

I had a problem where my computer wouldn't boot. In the process of solving the problem I encountered an error message that seems to be a bit of a WTF. Windows 7 looks for a file called ntldr when booting (based on the name I assume that file is used by all NT based versions of Windows). If ntldr can't be found, Windows won't boot and displays the message:

ntldr is missing

Press Ctrl Alt Del to restart

It's the second line of that error message I don't understand. If you press Ctrl Alt Del as instructed, the only thing that happens is Windows tries to boot again, and fails again, because . . . . ntldr is missing. And because ntldr is missing, Windows displays the same message, telling you to do exactly what you just did, which doesn't work and can't work because ntldr is missing.

What message should be displayed? I really don't know since there's no way to magically teleport the missing ntldr onto your hard drive. However, telling me to reboot makes no sense when the problem I'm having is the inability to boot.

Ben L.

Madness.

source

Cassidy

@El_Heffe said:

Press Ctrl Alt Del to restart
It's the second line of that error message I don't understand.

It doesn't read "Press Ctrl Alt Del to fix ntldr". It's expecting you to have some ERD or maybe a recovery CD/DVD that you can now insert and press those three keys to restart your computer, in the hope that it will boot off that media and drop you into a recovery shell - from which you can repair the broken NTLDR.

This is no difference to the "Keyboard not detected - press f1 to continue" message that people got. Once they plugged in their keyboard, pressing F1 would allow the BIOS to continue to boot normally.

I get that error some times when I reboot. If I turn off the computer for 5 minutes, it boots up again fine.