Hello, Someone please help. I can't even go on my computer anymore, I am writing this from my old 98 computer. Whenever I turn on my HP Pavilion 725n desktop, it says. Master Boot Record Error Press Any Key Then I press a key and it says, Reboot and Select proper Boot device or insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press any key. Now, my HP computer does XP re-installs differently then other computers. When I bought it they didn't give me a XP Home CD, but rather it had XP already installed, and made me make 6 recovery CD's. The Hard Drive is also partitioned for recovery. The hard drive is about 75 gigs, and 5 of those gigs are partitioned soley for HP recovery, and when I re-install windows, I use files from that partition, as well as the 6 CD's I made. So, when it gives me that error, I inset CD 1, and it lets me format the partition that doesn't have the recovery info on it, and then re-install windows. Now, I have done that, and still, every time I turn on my computer it gives me that error message. What can I do? How Can I tell it to boot into Windows. This is just my guess, that it may be trying to boot into the HP Recovery Partition and not the User Partition, which it should. But that's just a guess. I have a boot disk that will get me to a command line, so I could copy a new Master Boot Record, or add some boot program to fix this, but I don't know what to do. Also, if this means anything, the HP Recovery partition is under /dev/hda1 and the user partition is under /dev/hda2. Can someone please help me.

If you had a retail version of Windows XP you could probably fix the problem in seconds, but these OEM disk are a law onto themselves. 6 CDs seems a bit excessive when you consider the whole of XP comes on a single disk with room to spare. If you can, get into the Recovery Console which is probably the command line boot you mention. Run FixMBR and see what that does. >> Also, if this means anything, the HP Recovery partition is under /dev/hda1 and the user partition is under /dev/hda2.<< /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda2 is something I would expect to see under Linux, not Windows. Do you have Linux lurking about somewhere? Stuart

I put in the boot disk, which I had made in XP a few days ago, and entered FixMBR, and nothing happened. Just said bad command. Is there some other type of boot disk I need to download? Or can I download FixMBR? Also, I was thinking of installing Red Hat, and that's where I saw /dev/hda. Thanks for the suggestion. Have any others?

What worked for me with a similar problem was to run Partition Magic and call up drive C as though you were going to change it in some way. If your MBR is flawed partition magic will tell you and offer to fix it. This is a very quick fix and worked for me when various other disk recovery software didn't. If you can run a copy of PM you might try this. Good luck. Stewart Bit of a wit....half to be precise.