Recovering disk with corrupted MBR (I think)

[euston]

The system (C: drive) partition is OK but I cannot boot from the HDD. Partition Magic 8.5 says that the drive is bad. The Windows error-check says that the partition is OK with no errors. Norton Disk Doctor 2003 agrees.

I intend to Ghost(2003) the partition to an image, reformat the drive using the Windows XP setup disk. Then I intend to restore the partition from the Ghost image file.

I am aiming to achieve a bootable working system disk. Does what I intend to do make it likely that I will succeed?


Owzat! On ya way, back to the pavilion!

 

[kjv1611]

There are bootable tools available on the web for repairing an MBR pretty much automatically. One such is the Ultimate Boot CD - or rather, at least one of the applications on the disk. Another method would be with Windows XP Recovery console from the setup disk, assuming you have Windows XP Pro, not Home:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=4722

Then again, I suppose you could very well do it using a live CD of Linux, and repairing it from there as well, but I can't remember trying that method, myself.

Do some searches on MBR Recovery, MBR Repair, and you could very well find what you need. Just be wary you don't end up with some malware-laden site - in other words, be careful with your searches. That's a good rule of thumb, anyway.

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"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me