Fix MBR - Comments Page 1

Does this mean Recovery Console will refuse me if I am not using an Admin password?

EDITOR'S NOTE: If you have no password, I assume just entering a blank/null value would work.

For those with out access to the recovery console (for whatever reason) I found the free program mbrfix.exe very useful. It runs from a command prompt from within windows xp. -- http://www.sysint.no/Nedlasting/MbrFix.htm

MbrFix is pretty good for someone who doesn't have the Recovery Console. Thanks for that Adrian. For future downloaders, remember you have to go to the root site, http://www.sysint.no/ and then the "downloads" area to actually download it.

Thanks for the info...however, I got overly ambitious and tried a bunch of "stuff" on my own. I keep getting the same message...Press 1. Nothing happens. How do I know if I completely destroyed the hard drive (or if that was the problem to begin with)? I didn't get any restore disk with this Dell...and I think I wiped everything out. I did try the Windows XP disk. But, I think I put it in the wrong place and now have two copies on there (if that's possible)?

EDITOR'S NOTE: That depends on the "stuff" you tried... Worst case, you can FORMAT the disk and re-install Windows from the XP CD.

I had the same problem. I had Linux and uninstalled it and lost the MBR and couldn't boot into XP. I have a recovery disk for it but didn't know about,and haven't tried the method posted here. What I used was GAG (GRAPHICAL BOOT MANAGER) http://gag.sourceforge.net/

and it saved my butt! And it is very useful when you have more than one OS on your machine.

Be very careful with the recovery console commands FIXMBR and FIXBOOT. These commands are more likely to completely hose your system than fix it. Yes I tried and it completely screwed the partition table.

The better way to go is to boot from say an Acronis bootdisk (or whatever backup software you are using) and then restore a backup (you made a backup right?) ,then use a partition manager to hopefully fix the partition table. If the partition table is bad you will not be able to reinstall from the WinBlows CD. I tried that as well. Make sure you have a DOS bootdisk in order to be able to format the drive.

what if your hard disk is infected with virus, let say the STONE EMPIRE MONKEY virus? then you don't have any OS installed on your hard disk, it just was happened that it was a brand new hard disk which is sucked up with an infected machine. Maybe because of the BIOS is infected with unknown virus, and then u tried it to another machine and it doesn't detected by the another machine. What should I do to make it work again? When I'm trying to set it on fdisk\mbr, nothing happens, only an error occurs saying there no disk to fix? So what is the better way to get rid of this problems.. Hope someone can help me...

EDITOR'S NOTE: You can't get a virus in BIOS, so set that thought aside... I suggest you boot with the Windows Setup CD, then reformat. See http://askbobrankin.com/reformat_hard_drive_under_xp.html

Ok I have used fixmbr before to get rid of grub before, installed Ubuntu again. The problem is i boot into the recovery console and it says select drive but the thing is my laptop keyboard is broken and some of the keys don't work and one of them happens to be "1" I had to paste that one there and I don't have any spare keyboards lying around and I don't want to buy one. So is there an alternative way I tried a program called MBRFix and that did nout. Help me please..

EDITOR'S NOTE: The "1" key is kind of important. Get a cheap keyboard and plug it in the USB port.

A good friend of mine bought Vista and he let me try it out, but I disliked it very much. Anyway I ran into a lot of problems to switch back to XP, and though my hard drive works fine it has been acting strangely. I have reformatted and repartitioned my HD a number of times using the Windows XP CD, but it does not proceed the process after it deletes, formats and copies the files. It starts a countdown of 15 seconds to reboot and finish the Windows XP installation but it never does. Could it be the MBR? I have also fixboot and fixmbr in the console anumber of times.

Hi Al, try boot with Windows 98 CD, or older version of command.com. Just do fdisk after that, it should be works.

Hello, I did a recovery with my xp pro system disk at the install R and I lost my paging files, I believe it rewrote my MBR on a first attemp not knowing how to run the repair I accidently used the first R. I tried to realocate the paging file but it will not work. System takes about 8+ minutes to boot up, some of my programs were corrupt. Any Ideas other than a full re-install of everything....Dan.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Are you sure you did a Recovery? That means completely reloading your system from scratch? Also, what makes you think you lost your paging files?

When it asks for your Administrator password, just use the enter key. I have also found that just running CHKDSK /R very successful in fixing corrupt files and will report to you if the HD is failing.

Was running XP Pro SP2 spysweeper removed two trojans ran another spyware fnd DNS changer trojan left ran M$ malware removal tool now MBR on 300G SATA Boot Drive w/OS is corrupt Recovery console gets lost on 1. C: XP disc gets lost on install when searching for previous installs. On safe boot and cmd prompt boot files stop on sys32\ mub file ext. Where do I go from here? BIOS sees the SATA drive but not the boot record or partitions. AM I hosed?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Probably not... see http://askbobrankin.com/hard_drive_recovery.html and look for the link to TESTDISK.

Hi folks, I have used FixMBR from the XP Boot-CD's recovery console, quite successfully in the past, whenever I suspected a hard-disk MBR corruption. IMPORTANT: Always use FixBoot AFTER executing FixMBR, to make sure your system is made bootable again.

Something only alluded to in the comments is the issue of what happens if you aren't running Windows XP. For MS-DOS 5 (or is it 6) thru Windows Me, there's an undocumented switch in the FDISK command that fixes the problem. Just boot up with the version of DOS you're using (in the case of Win9x/Me, a startup disk) and enter FDISK /MBR and you're done!

Appreciate the 98/ME comment. I've used fdisk /MBR in the past and it works. I'm trying to use it again since my system only boots to the background screen weather in regular or safe mode. It seems that my ME start up disk will only allow me an artificial c: drive and wont get me to my actual harddrive. hmm...

EDITOR'S NOTE: You may be seeing the contents of the CD. Try the C: command to switch drives.

Good info on fixing MBRs here! Just happened to me and FIXMBR followed by FIXBOOT cleared it right up. Thanks Bob and Vivek for the tips!

I'm getting a "Disk Read Error" on my 160GB C: drive. I installed my XP O/S onto a spare 4GB drive and can boot my system up with my 160GB drive being used as my D: drive and I can see my folders and files on the 160GB drive. With the 4GB drive as the C: drive, I can boot to the Recovery Console. With the 160GB drive as the C: drive, I can't boot to the Recovery Console...the screen just stays blank once the boot process moved to the XP CD. So I am using the 4GB drive as the C: drive and booting to the Recovery Console and there, I used the FIXMBR and FIXBOOT commands, referencing the correct drive to fix, ie. FIXMBR \Device\HardDisk2\Partition1 and FIXBOOT d:.

After running the FIXMBR and FIXBOOT, I still get the Disk Read Error when trying to boot from the 160GB drive. I can still access my folder and files when the 160GB drive is used as a D: drive. So, do you think I've done all I can do and I now need to move on with a replacement drive for the 160GB drive? Or is there something else I should try?

EDITOR'S NOTE: It seems there is something wrong with the boot record. See http://askbobrankin.com/hard_drive_recovery.html and look for the link to TESTDISK, which may help to make it bootable. If that doesn't work, I'd move the files off the disk and hit it with a sledge hammer.

I had problems with my 40GB drive with Windows XP (Due to BSOD's). Prior to trying FixMBR (didn't find this website until after the fact), I installed XP on an older 15GB drive. I installed Windows fine, but the problem is now I cannot access my 400 GB slave drive. I can see it in Windows Explorer, BIOS, and computer management, but when attempting to access the files, it asks me if I want to format it. It also only sees 128GB. Any ideas? I would like to access the drive and back it up on an external drive prior to installing XP on this drive.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Are you sure you set the jumpers for the slave drive correctly? You might have better luck accessing the file if you buy an external converter kit. The 128GB limit is due to your old motherboard.

Hi there Im getting MBR error 1, thing is tried to do a FIXMBR said it cant. This is the 3rd hard drive in a month, and am starting to think it may be a motherboard issue causing all the problems. was wondering if anyone might have a thought on that... ty in advance...