Missing NTLDR and can't reformat ! ! !

So I am trying to fix a pc and upon bootup I get a black screen with a missing NTLDR error saying to press ctrl - alt- del to restart which I do. I go into the BIOS and everything looks ok so I set the system to boot from the cd and throw in the xp install disc to launch the repair tool. Repair tool comes up and I get the c prompt to manually type the copy command and get those files uploaded. system says files cannot be found. Great I say, I'll have to reformat. So I go thru the proccess of deleting the partion and creating a new one and everything seems fine till I get error after error message stating this .dll file is missing. I hit ok for over 5 minutes to get rid of them. Machine then gets to 5% and says it is now missing the wdigest.dll file and many many more. System will not let me go beyond this point. If I try to continue without the file is starts popping up more of those errors. Not sure what the problem is except for maybe a failing hard drive. Can't run any diagnostic tools to see what else might be wrong as I can't get to the command prompt unless I insert the repair disc. This one is stumping me big time and I need you techies out there to offer some advice I may not have thought of. Thanks.

"Missing NTLDR" means "There is no recognizable version of Windows operating system on the hard drive."
If reinstalling XP from scratch is not working, then there's some serious problem with the computer.
It could be the power supply not providing enough power, it could be a hard drive that has experienced a controller failure.
Use the XP install disk to run chkdsk, is what I'd do. There ARE some diagnostic tools that run in the command prompt.

XP is pretty terrible for these sort of things, it could be a dodgy hard disk, optical drive, install disk, full moon, you name it; there are a few things you can try.

Firstly, , make sure you've disconnected any other hard drives as the XP installer will install the bootloader onto what *it* decides is your primary drive, regardless of which one you pick to install it on.

Boot off the XP disk to the recovery console and try a "fixboot" followed by "fixmbr", which will repair the bootloader - this would likely have fixed your initial problem, but given what you've done since then it's now less likely.

You can try a full format of the drive, again the XP installer is extremely poor at dealing with problems with partitions and MFTs.

If you've got >2Gb of RAM, stick Win 7 on there instead.

The machine I am working on is a very old E-Machine D3107. Only 1 HD and only 256 RAM installed. I am going to assume it has gone the way of the dinosaur and has simply died.

Also let me rephrase that I can get to the c prompt via the recovery disc but the system does not recoqnize the chdsk command line, some kind of error that is an invalid command and yes I did double check to make sure I typed it right.

Gonna run SeaTools Dos to see if that helps to isolate the HD as the problem and then Memtest to see if its the RAM if the HD passes.

The HD is toast.

I actually have a pretty new rig I built last year based on the Father X-Mas guide. Best thing I ever did and the game looks and runs great.

The e-machine I am fixing is for one of my wifes co-workers and she cannot afford a new pc at this time so I am hoping it is only the HD and a new one with a fresh XP install will get her running again

One new 80GB HD and we are up and running. First encounter with a failed HD as I am kinda new to all this tech stuff but it sure was fun fixing it thou the 3 hours of downloads afterwards was not so much fun.

I had a hard drive that started making very soft clicking noises. I promptly backed it up.

Within twelve hours there was a lovely sound like a breaking pot from that harddrive.

Luckily, it was a secondary drive but it taught me that off-brand and cheap hard drives with names like "Quantum Fireball" are prone to coming apart at the seams.

Hard drives actually undergo a lot of stress. You're spinning multiple very thin platters at thousands of revolutions per second, and you have multiple read/write arms floating across them. Sooner or later, they will fail, the only question is how.

I've fixed many (too many) ntlrdr problems with the help of this web page: http://www.tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm

It will guide you through a boot disk and how to copy ntlrdr back on. If thats you're only problem with the HD, it often will fix it, and leave all your HD contents intact.

Thats actually one of the links I used to try and fix the problem but the hard drive itself was toast. I ran SeaTools DOS and it never passed the short or long test so I just replaced it and it's all good now.