How do I restore the MASTER BOOT RECORD (MBR) in win Xp Pro?
Hello,
I'm going to be installing Mandrake 9.2 onto either my C drive (Which currently has XP Pro installed on it) and or my D drive (my back up drive - Secondary hard drive)
First of all what drive would you reccomend to install Mandrake 9.2 on? I have 2, 80 gig'ers (C and D)?
Second, if by any chance I do not wan't mandrake on either of my drives and I decide to Uninstall it, How do I go about recovering the MBR (Master Boot Record) so when I restart, it will just boot into XP.
I heard of the fdisk /mbr but also someone told me to pop in the WIndows Xp Cd and go into the recovery thing and I got lost from there.
What is the proper way step by step to recover the windows Xp MBR?
Please help,
Thanks alot..
Chris
I'm going to be installing Mandrake 9.2 onto either my C drive (Which currently has XP Pro installed on it) and or my D drive (my back up drive - Secondary hard drive)
First of all what drive would you reccomend to install Mandrake 9.2 on? I have 2, 80 gig'ers (C and D)?
Second, if by any chance I do not wan't mandrake on either of my drives and I decide to Uninstall it, How do I go about recovering the MBR (Master Boot Record) so when I restart, it will just boot into XP.
I heard of the fdisk /mbr but also someone told me to pop in the WIndows Xp Cd and go into the recovery thing and I got lost from there.
What is the proper way step by step to recover the windows Xp MBR?
Please help,
Thanks alot..
Chris
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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PeteLong: Do NOT use FDISK /MBR with a Windows XP computer. It is not meant for use in XP or 2k systems. See the following question for some good info on the Master Boot Record in Windows systems:
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/20408614/mean-of-fdisk-mbr.html
As further evidence that FDISK /MBR shouldn't be used with XP, I'll quote from this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/columns/bong/winxppro/default.asp
fdisk /mbr should never be used with a NT OS's unless you want to eliminate the NT boot sector and replace it with the DOS boot sector, so you can reload DOS/Win9x OS. Difference being - FDISK /MBR sets a system up to boot DOS, thus the boot sector tell the machine to look for a file call IO.SYS to continue booting the OS. NT OS's on the other hand have utilities (depends on which version of NT - 2k/XP use the "recovery console" - I'm unsure about NT 4.0) to replace the boot sector with the NT boot info to look for the files NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI.
The proper way to fix the MBR in XP is to use Recovery Console and type the FIXMBR command. But this presumes that you have either: a) installed the Recovery Console on your XP system, and have a copy of the installation files for XP on your hard drive, usually in a folder (or subfolder) called i386 or b) you have the XP install CD and can boot to it and run Recovery Console from there. See this article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;307654
HOW TO: Install and Use the Recovery Console in Windows XP
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/20408614/mean-of-fdisk-mbr.html
As further evidence that FDISK /MBR shouldn't be used with XP, I'll quote from this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/columns/bong/winxppro/default.asp
fdisk /mbr should never be used with a NT OS's unless you want to eliminate the NT boot sector and replace it with the DOS boot sector, so you can reload DOS/Win9x OS. Difference being - FDISK /MBR sets a system up to boot DOS, thus the boot sector tell the machine to look for a file call IO.SYS to continue booting the OS. NT OS's on the other hand have utilities (depends on which version of NT - 2k/XP use the "recovery console" - I'm unsure about NT 4.0) to replace the boot sector with the NT boot info to look for the files NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI.
The proper way to fix the MBR in XP is to use Recovery Console and type the FIXMBR command. But this presumes that you have either: a) installed the Recovery Console on your XP system, and have a copy of the installation files for XP on your hard drive, usually in a folder (or subfolder) called i386 or b) you have the XP install CD and can boot to it and run Recovery Console from there. See this article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;307654
HOW TO: Install and Use the Recovery Console in Windows XP
Good catch Lee As a page editor can you remove the info I posted??
OK Lee thanks for the feedback
regards
Pete
regards
Pete
ASKER
What I did was poped in the WIN XP Cd and booted my pc up.
I pressed the R key after the things were loaded and it booted me into the Recovery Console.
Then I typed in
1) FIXBOOT C:
2) FIXMBR
Chris
I pressed the R key after the things were loaded and it booted me into the Recovery Console.
Then I typed in
1) FIXBOOT C:
2) FIXMBR
Chris
And did it correct the problem? If so, it looks like PeteLong's second option in his first comment above was the answer, and you should click on the Accept button for that comment, then in the next screen that comes up, choose a grade and click on Submit. If it didn't solve the problem, then let us know and we can continue to try helping you.
Ill take it as a yes then :)
Refresh The Windows XP installation to save your Data and settings etc.
How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade (Reinstallation) of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341