Boot problem - a question

[porty]

A customer's hard drive has (XPHome-SP2) has developed boot problems, and now sits with a black screen and a blinking cursor.

Windows WILL run with aid of a boot floppy, (made with an excellent little prog called FIXNTLDR.EXE from this site: h**p://tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm)

However, I can't get the system to work without the floppy, so it seems to me that the MBR or the boot sector may be damaged.

I've tried using the Recovery Console to apply FIXBOOT and then FIXMBR but nothing has changed.

Obviously, I don't want to do a reinstall unless it's absolutely necessary - I'd rather fix the problem if I can, for the experience if nothing else.

The smidgeon that I know about the boot apparatus tells me that the actual coding that's responsible for booting is only a few bytes. I'm wondering if I could prepare another (spare) drive with a boot sector, and then copy across all of the content of the original drive (without its boot sector)?

Advice would be appreciated.

NOTE: I'm not working on the original HDD - I've byte-for-byte cloned it to a spare drive. So I'm not afraid to try anything risky

 

[elmurado]

What happens if you try to reinstall over the top(not a format and install). That would be my first attempt.

Found this too

http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3/asm/mbr/WTC.htm

 

[linney]

You could copy the Booting Files from the floppy - Boot.ini, NtDetect.com and NtLdr - to the root of your C: drive and let then overwrite the current ones or rename them to something else. You may have to show both hidden and system files in Folder Options. The Boot.ini is probably a Read Only file too.

 

[bcastner]

NTLDR misssing, left with black screen and blinking cursor, discussed here: thread779-1270779


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[porty]

Folks, thanks for your suggestions.

Elmurado - I don't think an overinstall is going to fix this problem; I'll probably just screw up some of the users's files. I mean - Windows works 100% once it runs. It just won't boot.

Re the Starman post about boot sectors, I'm afraid it left me scratching my head.

Linney - Boot.ini, NtDetect.com and NtLdr aren't a problem. The boot floppy created with FIXNTLDR.EXE that I mentioned in my original post replaced these three files with copies of the ones on the floppy that successfully cause the system to boot to Windows. But if the hard drive boot sector is damaged, as I suspect, the boot process doesn't get as far as calling for Boot.ini, NtDetect.com and NtLdr.

A floppy simply bypasses the hard drive's boot system by using its own boot and THEN it employs those three files.

BCastner - A missing NTLDR isn't an issue, as I said above and in my first post.

 

[linney]

http://www.bootitng.com

from their free software.

MBRWork - Freeware utility to perform some common and uncommon MBR and disk functions. Provided As-Is.

It can perform the following:

1 - Backup the first track on a hard drive.

2 - Restore the backup file.

3 - Reset the EMBR area to all zeros.

4 - Reset the MBR area to all zeros.

5 - Install standard MBR Code

6 - Set a partition active (avail on the command line too)

7 - Work with multiple hard drives.

8 - Remove EZ-Drive (You must boot directly to a diskette (by passing ez-drive)
for this option to show)

9 - Edit MBR partition entry values.

A - If no partitions exist in the MBR and no EMBR exists then this option
will allow you to recover lost FAT, HPFS, NTFS, and Extened partitions.

C - Capture up to 64 disk sectors to a file.

R - Restore up to 64 disk sectors from a file. This feature should only
be used by those who completely understand what they are doing!

T - Transfer/Copy sectors from disk to disk. This feature should only
be used by those who completely understand what they are doing!

P - Compare sectors.



The following are notes from the late Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)

"Go to

http://www.bootitng.com.

look for MBRWORK in the free tolls and download it, put it on a DOS floppy (one made by formatting in XP and taking the MSDOS Startup disk option will do).

Boot that and run MBRWORK
Use options
1 (to back up the current state, so it could be restored with 2)
3 then 4 to delete the current code and tables
there will then be a possibility of using A
which will scan the disk for 'signatures' of partitions and rebuilt the partition table then
5
to install standard MBR code so the disk could be booted"

 

[bcastner]

BCastner - A missing NTLDR isn't an issue, as I said above and in my first post."

I did not in my post state that the NTLDR file was in fact missing; my post dealt with the fact that it could not be found during boot.

You are assuming this is due to a failed MBR. Microsoft thought for NTFS filestores a fragmented MTF could lead to your boot condition, enough to write a utility to repair the condition:

http://www.protostorm.com/bcupdate2.html

See my original link as to how to use bcupdate2.exe



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