MBR repair

  • Thread starter Thread starter DrDan
  • Start date Start date
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DrDan

about 7-10 days ago I installed the latest patches to XP pro from windows
update. Upon the required reboot I got a 'disk read error' at the end of the
bios boot messages and before any sort of windows boot messages. This has
happened before with ms updates and I'd like to not do the "wipe and
reinstall fromscratch" thing like the last 2 times.

Observations:

- I can boot a fedora 8 live cd and see all of my files on the hard drive.
I used that to make a backup of all my data files onto another machine.

- I can't get my XP Pro CD to boot and get me to the recovery console. It
says something about waiting while setup examines my hardware and then the
screen goes blank. One question I have is if my CD even has the recovery
console. My computer came with WinME pre-installed and I later purchased and
XP Pro upgrade CD. This has made the two prior reinstalls painful as I first
had to reinstall WinME and then do the XP upgrade.

- I have another computer here that came with XP pre-installed along with
the OEM XP CD. I have since reformatted that drive and run a different OS on
that machine. So I tried booting from that XP CD to see if I could get to
the recovery console. Same deal with getting that initial message from the
setup program and then the screen going blank.

- The WinME boot cd is worthless. It will only give the option of reformat
and start from scratch and of course WinME probably doesn't understand NTFS
anyway.

- At one point I bought a new hard drive which was much larger. I simply
did a from scratch install of winme followed by the xp upgrade followed by a
zillion times through running windows update and rebooting. When I did this,
I left the old drive in the machine and just moved the cables over. So I can
move the cables back and boot into XP if there is anything at all useful that
can be done there.

So... my theory is that the MBR got corrupted which is why I can't boot but
why linux can read the drive with no problems. What are my options for
fixing the MBR without rebuilding yet again?

To say I'm frustrated with microsoft would be an understatement here. XP
has died (as part of an update from microsoft) 3 times now and the whole
reason I coughed up $200 for XP pro was becuase WinME had self destructed
twice already.

Thanks
-Dan
 
DrDan said:
Upon the required reboot I got a 'disk read error' at the end of the
Click to expand...
So... my theory is that the MBR got corrupted which is why I can't boot
but
why linux can read the drive with no problems. What are my options for
fixing the MBR without rebuilding yet again?
Click to expand...

Tell you what, something similar happened to me a couple weeks ago, but it
was a bad drive cable somehow windows deleted a whole partition from the
mbr. I used an app called TestDisk by ChristopheGrenier at cgsecurity.org
it is included on Ultimate Boot CD.
 
bw said:
Tell you what, something similar happened to me a couple weeks ago, but it
was a bad drive cable somehow windows deleted a whole partition from the
mbr. I used an app called TestDisk by ChristopheGrenier at cgsecurity.org
it is included on Ultimate Boot CD.
Click to expand...

I downloaded a copy of system Rescue CD which has TestDisk. It showed the
NTFS partition and claimed that the main and backup MBR's matched. I also
tried using the option that installed a new MBR. Still no change.

Now I'm wondering if some file needed early on in the boot is corrupted.

System Rescue CD is at http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
 
DrDan said:
Now I'm wondering if some file needed early on in the boot is corrupted.
Click to expand...

Sounds like it, since you have a backup maybe you can zero fill the drive
and install from the XP disc that way? It's not that big a deal to
reinstall and apply SP2, and you probably want to get rid of WinME for good?
 
In case you can't find a fix and you must reinstall WinXP, do not install WinME
first. Simply start from scratch, wipe the HDD and do a clean install of WinXP.
During the install process you will be asked to install the disc of the
qualifying legacy OS for verification.

Naturally, by using this method you'll have to reinstall any of your
applications and data.

After you get the system up and running and up-to-date, be sure to create a copy
of your original WinXP CD with the latest SP slipstreamed. Google for nLite for
this task. You may have had a mismatch in the OS version levels before and
that's probably why you couldn't access the Recovery Console.

Good luck!
 
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