STOP !!! Don't do anything else that may write to the MBR and/or change the current partitions.
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Cannot access recovery partition after FIXMBR
I was having an issue where I would boot my desktop PC, and it would give the message "Press F3 to boot to recovery partition..." and would not go beyond that.
I used an XP CD to boot to recovery console. Instead of asking me for an admin password or which XP installation I wanted to repair, it went strait to a C:\ prompt. I tried FIXBOOT, restarted, with no change in behavior. I booted to the recovery console again, and ran FIXMBR, FIXBOOT, and BOOTCFG.
After reboot, I was no longer given the option to press F3 to boot to recovery partition, but Windows would still not boot. I would simply get an everlasting cursor on the screen.
I booted back into recovery console, and this time it did ask which windows installation, it asked for the admin password, and it gave me the C:\WINDOWS... So it seems that recovery console is behaving normally again.
However, I would like to know if I screwed the pooch, or if there is a way for me to "undo" the actions performed so I can just boot to the recovery partition and restore the computer to factory defaults.
- OR -
Do you have any idea why windows will not even try to boot? What do you suggest?
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Answers
Find the model from the serial number
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/
Okay, since you don't need to recover any data it's simple. You can -- before you begin -- simply attach the drive to another system and copy whatever files you need (as you noted above) ... or you can simply boot with a CD-based OS [Knoppix, Bart's PE, etc.] and copy them to an external USB drive directly on the system.
What you've done is wipe out the custom MBR that HP installs that basically just provides a multi-boot environment -- to either the OS or the recovery partition. All you have to do is make the recovery partition the active partition and the system will boot to it.
If you don't have any convenient 3rd party partition tools that will let you do this, just download the free demo version of Boot-It NG [
Make a bootable CD (Just run MakeDisk and either burn a CD directly or create an ISO and burn a CD from the ISO); boot from that CD; select CANCEL, then OK; click on Partition Work; click on View MBR; highlight the partition you want to boot from -- this will be obvious from the size; click on "Set Active", then on "Apply" -- and you're ready to go. Remove the Boot-It CD; click on Close; and click on Reboot ... and the system will boot to the recovery partition.
Are you sure you made the right partition active? (If using Boot-It, you did click "Apply" and "Close" before rebooting -- right?)
If so, try repeatedly pressing F10 during the POST -- you indicated it said F3 to get to recovery, but on every HP I can remember they used F10. It's possible there's code in the BIOS that's associated with the recovery ... and if F10 happens to be right, that will start that partition.
If that doesn't work, I'd just copy off all the data you need; and then use a standard XP CD to reload the system.
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by: ram_keralaPosted on 2009-10-16 at 10:09:41ID: 25591330
How u tried Fixmbr ?
The device (drive) on which you want to write a new master boot record. The name can be obtained from the output of the map command. An example of a device name is:
\Device\HardDisk0.
Example
The following example writes a new master boot record to the device specified:
fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0
===
And i hope Fixboot as
fixboot c:
You can try reinstallling as the last option, where you wil have all the data untill you dont format the harddisk, but you will need to install the applications after that
like MSOffice, AV, Etc