Tom's Guide | Tom's Hardware | Tom's Games
 |
 |
 |
I have just tried to repair an mbr by Fdisk /mbr. The system will now not boot and it appears that fdisk doesnt recognise my primary partition. I cannot re-format the hdd as I need the info. Does anyone know how to repair the MBR. I think it may be to do with the HDD having S.M.A.R.T. on it.
Thanks in advance
Disable the SMART option on the bios. Then boot from a floppy disk containing fdisk.exe and erase the partition. If fdisk doesn't find tha partition go to www.bootdisk.com and find a program named delpart.exe' and then put the file on the boot disk start your computer and run delpart.exe and erase all the partitions of the HD. Then reboot the machine and run fdisk and you should be abble to create a new partition.
Good luck.
0 
If you want to be able to access the existing part then you need to boot using a Win95 bootdisk. Make sure the boot disk has a copy of sys.com on it. Then you can boot using the disk and run "sys c:" (without the quotes) this should rewrite the boot files needed to boot into Win95. If you don't have a boot disk with sys.com on then you'll find plenty of places to download one by searching on Google.
0
BTW - don't use fdisk or delpart to delete the partition else you won't be able to get that info back!
0
thanks for the info but i cannot reach the c: drive to install sys and i fear that if i create a partition using fdisk it will wipe the data already on the system by making me format it.
0
It would really help to know EXACTLY what it says on your screen when you REMOVE the floppy disk, and then restart the machine - because if you can't even see your "C" drive by doing that, then the FIRST THING that you may have to do, is to check your bios settings.
After checking the bios, thereby ascertaining that the computer should indeed be able to boot with your hard disk, only then would I try a boot disk. I see no reason why you can't enter the FDISK mode once more, and then selecting option #4 in order to at least see WHICH PARTITIONS are being recognized in the first place. Knowing that, would be helpful to us too.
Hey Intel, AMD rulez!
0
without a boot disk my pc shows "missing operating system"
after the "verifying DMI pool data".
With a boot disk in c: is an invalid drive specification (because the partition information is wrong i think)
Fdisk shows 800mb unused space on the hard drive (e.g. no partitions at all) so to create a new partition would be easy but would fry my data. I think i need to modify the partition table in the MBR but don't know what to put in!!
0
You wrote:
"Fdisk shows 800mb unused space on the hard drive (e.g. no partitions at all)"If you're talking about an 800 MB drive, and FDISK shows that as being AVAILABLE hence unused space - then the bad news is that your data has already been wiped out when the partition was initially removed or altered. The only way that FDISK can do this, is if you alter an existing partition in the first place. Of course, altering a single partition on a single partition drive, would have an IMMEDIATE impact on the data that's on that partition, once the machine is rebooted.
The MBR (Master Boot Record) is the boot record on your drive. As soon as you fixed that, you also "fixed" your data inadvertently. One should never, ever mess with a MBR without first consulting and reading up on the subject. I believe your data is gone, and you have no choice other than to complete the FDISK process by activating your 800 MB partition, and then reformatting it.
Before you do anything else, you can check that drive on another computer, set up as the SLAVE - just to see if another Windows system recognizes the info, but I doubt it.
Hey Intel, AMD rulez!
0
If your using win98 run cdrom as 1st boot device, setup win98 as you would normally do, this will jsut reinstall win98 and all your data will be there, by doing this win98 will rewrite the MBR.
0
Monjen, you need to re-read the previous posts. The issue is *NOT* if Win98 can be set up again. Any space that FDISK reads as unused space happens to be EMPTY - UNFORMATTED space on the hard drive, WAITING for you to do something with. Otherwise, you'd get actual partition information - which StuMegu didn't get. But go ahead and try what monjen suggested. I would *LOVE* to hear how that worked out - since you can't magically make something appear, that no longer exists. YES, you should be able to install Win98 once again, but you will NOT be able to magically save any previously existing programs or data files once the hard disk partition has been reformatted.
And if FDISK shows the space to be UNUSED as you say, WITHOUT any partitions - then you'll have to format the partition BEFORE you install Win98 on it. And if all of your space indeed shows up as empty and unused, then there is no longer an MBR to fix.
Hey Intel, AMD rulez!
0
Thanks for all the help guys, after searching for ever on the net i found a freeware program that managed to query the hdd without looking at the damaged mbr. I retreived all the info back off the hdd. the program is called "PC Inspector File Recovery" and needs to run from a Win9x machine. All i have to do now is reinstall OS and I'm done.
0  |
 CHAINTECH vs MSI, ASUS¡K.
|
BIOS flashing issues
|
This post is quite old and has been locked from receiving new replies. Please create a new posting instead.
| Ads by Google |
