************************** short story: ************************** i am trying to restore MBR on a Toshiba 60GB hard drive with fdisk/mbr, it returns saying "Error writing fixed disk. The master boot code has NOT been updated." is there a way i can set the read-only attribute off so i can modify the MBR? further more, what does the message mean? ************************** long story: ************************** i was using Norton Ghost ghosting a partition from one complete different system to another it went alright without a problem until it finishes thru 100% and said it'd like a reboot after a reboot the problem happens saying things like giving me 3 choices: (1) go into dos... (2) use Ghost... to revert... (3) returning to windows it has been a week, so i was making out the choices out of my very rough memory. later someone on internet told me to use DBAN to wipe out everything in my HDD, which i did and the util did a marvellous job too. now since the hdd is all zeroed, so i tried using fdisk to create new partitions. after fdisk'ed it said it needed a reboot in order to take effect (before DBAN'ed, fdisk used to say it had problem writing to disk) from first i was happy to see it was working, then even after rebooting the computer still wasn't set with the partition table that i had set previously so now i am figuring if i can use fdisk/mbr to restore the MBR section it would be great i have tried several utilties which all of them said they had problem writing to disk. i wonder what can i do to help? these are the utilities i have tried DBAN FDISK MBRTOOL MHDD SPFDISK (special FDISK) please help

i like to mention it is an IDE 2.5" 60Gb Toshiba hdd for notebooks

Hi,Check in the BIOS Setup. Some have a virus check feature. It only checks to see if anything is writing to the MBR. It usually is setup to only warn you that the MBR is being written to. If you are causing it you have only to press any key to continue with the Partitioning. If you didn't cause it a VIrus is writing to the MBR. You can turn it off or just key through it. MAYBE? Good Luck, Jim Good Luck, Jim

Do as JimPIM says... Otherwise: 1. Wipe the drive. 2. Run FDISK to make your partition sizes. 3. Reboot. 4. Run Format to create the partition tables. 5. Reboot. 6. Then install your OS. (DOS?) If the OS is actually XP and not OEM then just skip 4 and 5 above and use the installation CD's utilitites. Bryan

HI, Boot from a WIn 98 SE bootable floppy disk. Type FDISK Say yes to the question re large disk support. What has happened is that Ghost creates its own partition and makes it the ACTIVE partition. You than get into a continuous reboot loop from that new active partition. Ghost runs from this active partition and not your C: drive. Display your existing partitions Option 4 There will be a small new ACTIVE partition of around 8mb. Simply delete this partition and make your Original C: drive the active partition. hth Ceri

Yeah, you'll need at least windows 98 dos to properly setup the drive. You don't mention what you've been using.