Broken MBR - please help

[Raf]

Urgent...
I tried to install a Linux (Ubuntu) on another disk, and the GRUB utility
over-wrote my WindowsXP MBR, and obviously my PC no longer boots. I have a
laptop that, unfortunately, does not have a floppy disk drive but WindowsXP
doesn't recognize the internal SATA drive otherwise, so I cannot run recovery
console to use FIXMBR.

I need to hack this to make it work by Monday morning, or I'm toast. ANY
ideas are greatly appreciated!

 

[dg1261]

I tried to install a Linux (Ubuntu) on another disk, and the GRUB utility
over-wrote my WindowsXP MBR, and obviously my PC no longer boots.
I have a laptop that, unfortunately, does not have a floppy disk drive but
WindowsXP doesn't recognize the internal SATA drive otherwise, so I
cannot run recovery console to use FIXMBR.

Visit www.bootitng.com, download BootIt-NG (BING) and follow the
instructions to make a bootable CD.

Boot the problem laptop from the BING CD.

Press [Cancel] to skip installing BING on the hard disk.

Press [OK] to enter maintenance mode.

Click [Partition Work].

Click [View MBR].

Click [Std MBR] to replace the MBR with a standard, XP-friendly version.

Click [Apply] to write the change to the hard disk.

Remove CD and see if it now boots to XP.

 

[Raf]

I solved it.

There is a brilliant utility call nLite which allows one to "integrate stuff
into" the WinXP boot/install CD. AWESOME! I was able to get my SATA drive
drivers into the WinXP install cd, re-burned it, and then when WinXP finally
"saw" the drive I did an R for recovery console and "fixmbr" (but that didn't
resolve it totally), and rebooted once again, back into Recovery console, and
then "fixboot" and now everything is back to the way it was... *whew*!

Raf.

I tried to install a Linux (Ubuntu) on another disk, and the GRUB utility
over-wrote my WindowsXP MBR, and obviously my PC no longer boots.
I have a laptop that, unfortunately, does not have a floppy disk drive but
WindowsXP doesn't recognize the internal SATA drive otherwise, so I
cannot run recovery console to use FIXMBR.

Visit www.bootitng.com, download BootIt-NG (BING) and follow the
instructions to make a bootable CD.

Boot the problem laptop from the BING CD.

Press [Cancel] to skip installing BING on the hard disk.

Press [OK] to enter maintenance mode.

Click [Partition Work].

Click [View MBR].

Click [Std MBR] to replace the MBR with a standard, XP-friendly version.

Click [Apply] to write the change to the hard disk.

Remove CD and see if it now boots to XP.