How you can fix your screwed up Win Bootblock...

Tim77

Just in case, someone has the same problem and is searching this forum for a solution... :wink:

After I installed Grub I, WinXP refused to boot. I think I wrote grub via

soulwarrior · Guru Joined: 21 Oct 2002 Posts: 331

If I remember correctly there does also exist the "fixmbr" command on the Windows-XP cdrom, maybe this could also help to fix the bootsector.
I was once in the same situation and I think I rescued my system with fixmbr and fixboot.

Mystilleef · Guru Joined: 27 Apr 2003 Posts: 561 Location: Earth

Hello Gents,

I usually do a fixboot and fixmbr to rewrite the MBR, this wipe grup or lilo of. I then use a chroot into my linux partition via a Gentoo-live CD and then use grub or lilo as the case may be.

It fixmbr should be done with caution. The last time I use it, I lost the my MBR, but I doubt that was the reason, I had done several silly things prior to that command.

In many cases, people experiencing the problem listed above can't even boot into a Windows XP bootable CD. The above post might rectify this problem.

Good Luck

Mystilleef
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ebrostig · Posted: Fri May 16, 2003 10:17 pm Post subject:

Boot from a DOS disk and run: fdisk /mbr

Erik
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Tim77 · Posted: Sat May 17, 2003 9:06 am Post subject:

I tried fixboot and fixmbr both without any success. The dd-solution solved the problem.

radTube · n00b Joined: 05 Mar 2003 Posts: 24 Location: Finland

Y'all should read Tim77's initial post again. He accidentally installed grub into the first sector of the windows partition, not into the mbr of the disk. Can't fix that by replacing the mbr.

elmie · Posted: Tue May 20, 2003 12:29 pm Post subject:

lol, what a complete waste of time with all the crap.. excuse me!

if you can get or have a bootable floppy, stick it into the PC, boot it with the windows floppy..
once done just type fdisk /mbr to remove the GRUB boot from the drive and windows is back, good as gold mate!! simple.....

have fun

Reformist · Guru Joined: 06 Oct 2002 Posts: 323

worked for me as well! Go fat 32 and dd! Man am I glad I formatted everything fat32... my friends say it's an abomination compared to ntfs, but when you're doing linux interop, it's essential!
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kabutor · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 2:06 am Post subject:

Same dumb mistake here, and browsing with lynk and this post saves me 10 hours work. (The dd trick works in fat32 perfect)

Nice Post Tim77 !!!!! Thank you very much !!

aman · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 8:05 am Post subject:

If you copy ntldr, and ntdetect.com from the winxp cdrom in the /i386 directory to your c, or windows boot drive, then run fixmbr you will be in good shape. It might be a little redundant, but it works for me every time. Oddly, now that I have spent so much time setting up gentoo, I dont even care about my windows installs anymore. :lol:

replace drive with your cd-rom drive letter, and run these two commands after cd'ing into your C drive.

Gentree · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 10:57 pm Post subject:

aman · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 11:14 pm Post subject:

Sorry I dont have any tips for WIN98, but maybe now is a good time to switch to WIN2000 or something.
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Gentree · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 11:26 pm Post subject:

Yeah, well I'd prefere to upgrade one OS at a time that way I'm not throwing everything into the air.

As for win2000 the whole reason Im investing time in trying Linux is 'cos I'd had an arse full of windows. To be honest it no longer looks so bad!

Now back to recover my boot sector.

Gentree · Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 11:31 am Post subject:

Follow up on last post:

I didnot manage to recover my win98 bootsector with the dd tip given above. Not sure why because I'm sure I have used that in the past on this system.

I used a floppy created with sys a: and then added a copy of sys.com to the floppy.

reboot system with floppy and execute sys c:

Finally a fdisk /mbr to be sure of a clean start and reinstalled Grub (correctly this time) on hd0.

HTH