Fix MBR - Comments Page 7

Hi! I did a dual boot install using Ubuntu however I thought I had installed this to a separate USB external hd. I'm trying to do an MBR repair but my XP recovery disk will only (or so it seems) allow for a complete write over! HELP!!!!

EDITOR'S NOTE: Try the TESTDISK program, it might help.

Thanks. Your instructions work and I'm back up and running....on one drive. I had the drive mirrored and both mbr were corrupted. Now the mirror is gone and Windows thinks I have two drives.

My computer doesn't even display the messages about master boot sector or partition or operating system. Instead of this it freezes just before it should start loading xp. The funny thing is that strange flashing colorful characters appear randomly in the screen.[different every time].
The disk is partitioned and the specific partition can not be opened by anything or fixed [spinrite, erd commander, linux]. I even tried to reinstall xp and lose all my files, but this message comes up: ql10wnt.sys is corrupted,when i reinstall windows. That means i can not go to the recovery console.... How can i repair my mbr? Thanks in advance.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sounds like you have a defective install disk. I also think you'll need to completely reformat the disk.

I recovered all my data from an inaccessible disk to chkdsk, fixmbr or fixboot with the free testdisk from sourceforge, win version, PC option. I booted from another HD

I had my suspicions about how to get Linux and LILO out of my machine but wanted some more info. Your article was the easiest explanation I found and it worked like a champ. Now I can keep my stable XP as the core and run my little virtual machines to my hearts content. Thanks.

I have a 40GB laptop hard drive that apparently has physical damage to the first sector where the Master Boot Record is normally written. The fixmbr and fixboot commands don't work and chkdsk returns an error saying that the drive has unrecoverable errors, or something to that effect. I'm currently using the drive in a USB enclosure, I partitioned the first 1GB as unallocated space and the rest as a single drive and it works perfectly. Is there any workaround to the MBR having to be in the first physical sector? Can the MBR be written to a floppy disk that then points to the hard drive for the OS?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think the MBR can be moved. See http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/master_boot_record.htm for some interesting background. Did you try TESTDISK?

I was running XP Media Edition. My computer was starting to run slow so I opened MSCONFIG. I went to STARTUP and unchecked all the items.

When I went to restart my computer I began get errors and the system would not boot up. I have no idea where the Windows CD's are that came with the computer. Finally, I ended up with a blue screen.

I have sense bought a new computer. I did remove the old hard drive and install it as a SCSI hard drive on the new computer, thinking that it might work and I might be able to recover my data, but nothing. It does recognise the drive, but I cannot access it. Can you help?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You probably need SCSI drivers. Check with the drive vendor's website.

I was running Windows XP, it had booted up fine and walked out of the room and when I came back the screen saver was on and the hard drive was making a clicking sound and it had frozen up on me. I restarted but to no avail it said primary hard drive 0 failure, when I try to boot. Is this a boot or an MBR failure?

Ironically I was about to wipe the drive clean and start new. Is this drive toast? I can't seem to mount it with Linux (could be doing something wrong). I was going to try to wipe it from linux and start again. However if I can't even mount it I don't even have a starting point. Any thoughts?

EDITOR'S NOTE: A clicking sound from a hard drive is almost always bad. Sounds like a hardware failure.

Hello Bob!

Thanks for the great article. I hope you can help me with a follow up question. (I have a RAW file system problem and I'm pretty sure I have boot sector corruption)

Does fixing the MBR or Boot Sector using this technique compromise data on the rest of the disk? I have important data on my drive that I would like to recover and I want to know if I'll still be able to retrieve it using data recovery software after replacing the MBR.

My plan was to retrieve as much data as possible, (using data recovery software) and then simply reformat the disk after I had recovered all the important bits.

However, if I could get the disk running again simply by replacing the MBR using your guidelines I could save money by not having to purchase data recovery software.

Would you advise trying to recover all important files using data recovery software prior to replacing the MBR?

EDITOR'S NOTE: When the MBR is damaged, the system may report that you have a RAW file system, even though your data is still all there. My best guess is that fixing the MBR will bring the disk back to life, but it's hard to say for sure. I *think* the TESTDISK program can make a temporary fix to the disk, and then let you decide how to proceed.

I am running Win XP Pro. I have two hard drives on my system. One is my primary (main HD) disk I use for 'everything'. The second disk I use to backup everything from my primary disk (on a nightly basis).
If I remove my 'backup HD' from my system and try to start from just my primary disk it fails. It seems I need to have both disks installed to be able to boot my system.
I suspect I need to rebuild my MBR. How would I go about doing this for my setup - would I just install my primary HD and then follow your procedure for fixing the MBR and then put my second HD back in the system? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

EDITOR'S NOTE: That might work, but what error/problem do you see when you try to boot from the primary HD?