BOOT-Land, seems like a place to solve my boot problem.., Need to repair my XP MBR External links Options

[Bob K.]

I had an HP XP SP3 system working fine for about 5 yrs.
It began with display sync problems, I backed up important data, then began getting boot errors, and twice - "MBR error", but power on/off kept it going (to allow backup of data most). Finally, Big Black Screen. Sort of proved the MB went on the old XP system.

Bought another HP with Windows 7 64bit. Initialized it, then swapped out the W7 HD and installed the WD 240GB. New PC came up with "invalid MBR" error msg and stopped.

Put W7 WD 640GB HD back & added the old XP HD (as 'Disk1'). W7 comes up & everything on the both HD's test 100% good but, the old XP HD comes online but without a volume letter.

I had two partitions on the XP, about 15GB D: 'recovery' (in lieu of Windows Install discs) which I *THINK* was FAT32, and about 225GB C: NTFS..

Now - I discover NONE of my many older utilities will not run on W7! I can't find anything that can read the sectors of the old XP HD. Nothing found for W7 & none of my older programs work.
I note that XP SP2 had "DISKPROBE", a sector editor, and Vista had it's own version of "DISKPROBE", neither work on W7.

I've found some of the "UBER" Security loaded on W7, maybe not all. But I need to find either a W7 HD Sector reader, and write MBR, OR a CD/DVD image with appropriate HD sector editor. -- And any advice this 'old timer' can use..

I NEED: to read the XP's MBR, determine what's missing (ending x'55AA' for one, partition tables?) and repair, by rewritting that MBR with a valid XP boot code, partition tables & ending two bytes. I can't find anything that will run on W7!!

I've done this type of repair many times in DOS days, but never on a Windows system (maybe Win98, but that was still DOS), so even if partition table is missing, I can likely poke around the drive and find where the 2nd partition starts to determine limits.

Thanks,
Bob K.

[Wonko the Sane]

First thing, Welcome to the Board.

Replied to your thread on 911CD:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=23627



Wonko

[Bob K.]

TESTDISK fixed it.. It was the loss of all those old DOS & XP programs I'd been using.. Everything I tried was "...INCOMPATIBLE .." to Windows 7 64bit..

But TESTDISK is said to work on all releases of Windows, & it did & it fixed it..
It's VERY simple to use. I didn't read any help/documents as I thought TESTDISK would only 'test' the disk..
It popped up and said "X'55AA' is missing"! .. Then next, it showed a blank line as my partition tables (evidently hex zeroes).. Next is did a quick scan and found the backup MBR with the correct partition tables.. To be sure, I let it do a "Deep Scan" and it found the same values (I assume it actually searched for what looked like partitions as it took over 20 minutes and showed CYL numbers increasing)..

Values were the same, and looked about right.. I let it write the fix,, and with a DISKPART RESCAN, my Windows 7 brought both partitions online!..

Bob K.

[Wonko the Sane]

Happy to know you are back to the happy bunnies basket.
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...28727&st=10

Wonko