Hi there FreeDos has replaced the mbr and it now loads FreeDos from the hard drive instead of windows when booting, i don't have a back up of the mbr, and have no rescue disk, only have a boot disk, and can't reinstall Windows due to lack of an actual Windows cd. My computer came with a compaq quick restore cd apparently containing windows(it's a compaq presario 1200 laptop), but i can't access windows to reinstall it though. Also a boot manager isn't an option as they don't seem to detect windows and freedos on the same partition(the only detect freedos). Any ideas would be great? Cheers 'n' Thanks MagicMuffin(aka Sean)

Make a Windows ME startup diskette on a working Windows ME system. Boot your system with it and run FDISK /MBR to correct the master boot record. Then see if it solves your problem. If someone did a SYS C: command with a FreeDOS disk, then other files could be corrupted and you will have to restore them if you can. Else, after booting with a Windows ME startup diskette, go to C:\Windows\Options\Install {or \CABS} and locate the SETUP.exe program. Start it. It will allow you to rebuild Windows ME without clearing the disk. You may need the ProductKey for your system to run it.

I don't know anyone with WinME or what not but i have found setup.exe which seems to be the only option from the ones you listed above, so i'll try that. Thank you very much for help :-) I greatly appreciate it. Cheers, MagicMuffin

Thanks again, that worked absolutely perfect. One more question you may be able to help me with, after windows had been reinstalled it left some files by the name of FILE0001.CHK(there 26 of them) one being rather large size 497mb, should i keep these or remove them? Scandisk did fix some files before installing windows and said something about this but i can't remember what.

Delete the *.chk files. Why do you have FreeDOS on your machine?

I was curious, so i installed it :-)