Accidently lost MBR...

[McBugzz]

Linux has successfully killed my MBR i.e. placed LILO there. I need to restore the MBR, and I don't have any rescue discs or smth. I can boot XP because LILO allows it, but I want XP to restore the MBR as it was before Linux.

Recovery Console seems to be dangerous - says I shouldn't use fixmbr if I can read files. fixboot doesn't help.

Any suggestions?

Thanx

 

[Comtech]

This is definitely a case of "fixmbr".
Boot to the XP CD, and enter the repair console, and use fixmbr. Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

 

[bertoliten]

hi, i think you have to boot with a simple boot disk with fdisk and in the command line write
"fdisk MBR" or something

bye

 

[bertoliten]

ops, sorry, the messange was i wrote upstear was for other question

 

[McBugzz]

fixmbr in the recovery console does seem like a solution here, but why was that warning then? I mean, it - the recovery console - said that using it may ruin my partition table and I shouldn't use it if I can read files. Is it really that dangerous?

 

[Comtech]

It will ruin your current partition table. It will eliminate the Linux portion, allowing a boot to windows.
Yes, it can be that destructive if you have any non-dos partitions. Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

 

[wolluf]

Fixmbr won't actually touch the partition table - just writes a standard windows mbr to boot machine with (so will overwrite any other boot manger, like lilo that lives there - and virus, btw). If you have a linux partition, it will still be intact - but you'd need another way of booting it. The warnings are there because it is overwriting a fundamental part of your PC - the code that loads the operating system.

PS, running fdisk /mbr from A: prompt after booting from a win98 boot floppy will have a similar effect.

 

[McBugzz]

> Yes, it can be that destructive if you have any non-dos partitions.

I used fixmbr and it worked just right, but... isn't an ext2 a non-dos partition? It is, and I don't understand then why didn't fixmbr cause problems.

 

[wolluf]

McBugzz - didn't you read my previous post - Fixmbr does NOT update the partition table.

 

[McBugzz]

Ok, thanks for the help.

 

[Comtech]

I should have worded my reply better.
It won't destroy the partition table, it just will overwrite the MBR so any non-dos partitions you have will be inaccessable at boot.
Thanks to wolluf for clearing that up. Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

 

[hoibes]

i have a similar situation -- i have a (xandros) linux partition that i would like to remove so that i can use the disk space in xp again. is there anything else i need to do besides a) running fixmbr, and b) reformatting the partition back to ntfs?

thanks

 

[Comtech]

Nope, just fixmbr, do whatever you want to the old Linux partition, and then edit boot.ini to remove the Linux boot line (or whatever boot loader you're using). Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/