Is there any way to re-write the master boot record of a HDD? I just got a toshiba portege 3110ct laptop with no cd or floppy drives(both external) which came to me booting to a c:> prompt. I have a USB HDD enclosure which I put the laptops HDD in and copied my win XP cd to. I began to run the setup and encountered errors so I decided to just reformat the HDD from windows in its external usb enclosure and start all over. What I didnt realize untill after ALOT of research is that when I began the XP install it re-wrote my MBR(master boot record) to the new version that just searches for the ntldr file, which loads the boot.ini file, which just points the hdd to the dir where the OS is installed so it can start the OS, therefore, no more c:> prompt!, and I'm screwed since there is no OS on it to find! What can I do!? Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks

All Operating Systems write to the MBR when they installed. As your aborted installation and format wiped out the previous OS, you are going to need a floppy or CD drive in order to install anything. The MBR is the least of your problems. Installing Windows XP is normally done from a CD. Although you can install XP from files on the hard disk, it is fraught with problems as you have discovered. Even then you need a working operating system on the hard disk in order to do it and you have to do it in such a way that it doesn't wipe out the existing operating system, i.e a dual boot system. As Windows XP has no DOS, it will never boot to a C:\ prompt. When it boots it boots straight into Windows. If you want to boot to C:\ then you need to install a DOS based OS like Windows 95/98 or even MS-DOS itself. Stuart

Create a boot diskette. Just download the files from http://www.bootdisk.com/. Once it loads the boot disk it will give you a c: prompt. Type help and you will get the commands you can use there. One of them is to rebuild de MBR. Hope that helps Ray

I don't know about all these "USB enclosures", here is what I'd do Get one of these http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat%5Fid=906&sku=17705&engine=adwords!654&keyword=%28laptop+hard+drive+adaptor%29 Now you can set the drive up temporarily on an IDE channel in your desktop computer. Use a '98 bootdisk to partition and format the drive in FAT32. either use "format/s" or after formatting, "sys" the drive, so that it's bootable. Now, make a directory called \I386 Either load smartdrive from your boot floppy, or boot your desktop into Winhozed. You can use either a 98 or an NT/W2K/XP machine for this. Insert your XP CD, and copy the contents of the I386 folder to the laptop hdd Now when you reinstall into the laptop, you should be bable to boot the drive, and run the XP installer.

You can't use any USB devices to install Windows XP upon first reboot, the XP install doesn't know squat about your USB. Is this what happened?? Search Engines Are Your Friends ☺ Morpheus: There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. "The Matrix"

Name has the answer for you - though you can just as well do what he says with the HDD in a USB box attached to your desktop. However, looking at the spec, I think I would install 98SE or ME - it will run quicker than XP. Me has the advantage of handling USB devices better, so when you put another HD in your USB enclosure, ME will see it without drivers. A small but useful asset on a laptop where you might want to talk to a USB device belonging to someone else and no driver to hand.