Can't Get Rid Of Unwanted Reference In MBR

[John Thow]

LO Again,

The system's original HDD had a reference to an (unwanted) Ontrack overlay
added to its MBR when a second HDD was added. Removal of the overlay from the
new disk has not removed the reference from the original. This has disabled
the multi-boot manager (PowerQuest BootMagic) which cannot be re-enabled with
the reference still in place. Seagate, who supplied the new disk and
installation software, say we need to re-initialise the disk in order to get
rid of the unwanted data in the MBR.

A W2K backup and restore to a new installation doesn't seem restore the system
correctly. A Ghost disk to disk clone enables the system to boot but,
obviously, clones the affected MBR so doesn't overcome the multi-boot issue.

I tried to overcome the problem by making a Ghost image of the C: drive and
using Ghost Explorer to copy the file system (minus the W2K initialisation
files) from the image to a new W2K installation on the new drive. This gives
me a 'pagefile too small' error on bootup and no access to W2K to get in and
change it. (Blue screen with mouse pointer; system logs itself off; logs on
again; same error - even with startup & recovery auto re-boot off.)

That's similar to the situation described in the article at:-
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/2001010515340025
The difference is that the 'pagefile too small' error occurs even when the
copied disk is the only one attached to the system. I have also tried
deleting the pagefile and running chkdsk /r as suggested in the reference.
No luck there.... Since this is not a new installation, Sysprep doesn't seem
appropriate and implies using a clone of the original disk - which won't work
in this case.

Patching the MBR may be the answer, but I'd need to be hand steered through
doing that.... (File system is FAT32)

Any ideas on how to resolve this would be welcome. [I've already wasted about
3 days going through the methods outlined above! - Computers; don't you love
'em?]

BTW, the MBR entry also stops PartitionMagic from working. That asks me to
start the system from the HDD and insert a bootable floppy. Of course, that
won't work because there's no overlay installed.....


TIA

--
John Thow
an optimist is a guy/ that has never had/ much experience -
certain maxims of archie; Don Marquis.

To e-mail me, replace the DOTs in the Reply-To: address with dots!

 

[Steve N.]

Boot from a Win98 CD or Floppy and run FDISK /MBR. That will replace the
MBR with a generic one and does not result in any data loss on the drive.

Steve

 

[ByTor]

LO Again,

The system's original HDD had a reference to an (unwanted) Ontrack overlay
added to its MBR when a second HDD was added. Removal of the overlay from the
new disk has not removed the reference from the original. This has disabled
the multi-boot manager (PowerQuest BootMagic) which cannot be re-enabled with
the reference still in place. Seagate, who supplied the new disk and
installation software, say we need to re-initialise the disk in order to get
rid of the unwanted data in the MBR.

A W2K backup and restore to a new installation doesn't seem restore the system
correctly. A Ghost disk to disk clone enables the system to boot but,
obviously, clones the affected MBR so doesn't overcome the multi-boot issue.

I tried to overcome the problem by making a Ghost image of the C: drive and
using Ghost Explorer to copy the file system (minus the W2K initialisation
files) from the image to a new W2K installation on the new drive. This gives
me a 'pagefile too small' error on bootup and no access to W2K to get in and
change it. (Blue screen with mouse pointer; system logs itself off; logs on
again; same error - even with startup & recovery auto re-boot off.)

That's similar to the situation described in the article at:-
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/2001010515340025
The difference is that the 'pagefile too small' error occurs even when the
copied disk is the only one attached to the system. I have also tried
deleting the pagefile and running chkdsk /r as suggested in the reference.
No luck there.... Since this is not a new installation, Sysprep doesn't seem
appropriate and implies using a clone of the original disk - which won't work
in this case.

Patching the MBR may be the answer, but I'd need to be hand steered through
doing that.... (File system is FAT32)

Any ideas on how to resolve this would be welcome. [I've already wasted about
3 days going through the methods outlined above! - Computers; don't you love
'em?]

BTW, the MBR entry also stops PartitionMagic from working. That asks me to
start the system from the HDD and insert a bootable floppy. Of course, that
won't work because there's no overlay installed.....


TIA

--
John Thow
an optimist is a guy/ that has never had/ much experience -
certain maxims of archie; Don Marquis.

To e-mail me, replace the DOTs in the Reply-To: address with dots!

Did you try to simply boot to the cd, use the repair option/advanced
recovery console and re-format the MBR???

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?
scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q291/9/80.ASP&N
oWebContent=1

Pagefile to small can be changed booting in to safe mode....Happened to
me the other day when it was accidently wiped out. Safe mode created a
temp that allowed me to run it.

Good luck.

 

[John Thow]

Boot from a Win98 CD or Floppy and run FDISK /MBR. That will replace the
MBR with a generic one and does not result in any data loss on the drive.

Steve

[Chop earlier stuff]

Steve,

Tried that. It didn't correct the thing. Presumably, the references are in
the boot sector further along.

Thanks.
--
John Thow
an optimist is a guy/ that has never had/ much experience -
certain maxims of archie; Don Marquis.

To e-mail me, replace the DOTs in the Reply-To: address with dots!

 

[John Thow]

LO Again,

The system's original HDD had a reference to an (unwanted) Ontrack overlay
added to its MBR when a second HDD was added. Removal of the overlay from the
new disk has not removed the reference from the original. This has disabled
the multi-boot manager (PowerQuest BootMagic) which cannot be re-enabled with
the reference still in place. Seagate, who supplied the new disk and
installation software, say we need to re-initialise the disk in order to get
rid of the unwanted data in the MBR.

[Chop]

Did you try to simply boot to the cd, use the repair option/advanced
recovery console and re-format the MBR???

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?
scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q291/9/80.ASP&N
oWebContent=1

Pagefile to small can be changed booting in to safe mode....Happened to
me the other day when it was accidently wiped out. Safe mode created a
temp that allowed me to run it.

ByTor,

Tried the first one: No difference. W2K won't boot into safe mode; just
stalls.

Thanks.
--
John Thow
an optimist is a guy/ that has never had/ much experience -
certain maxims of archie; Don Marquis.

To e-mail me, replace the DOTs in the Reply-To: address with dots!

 

[Steve N.]

Boot from a Win98 CD or Floppy and run FDISK /MBR. That will replace the
MBR with a generic one and does not result in any data loss on the drive.

Steve

John Thow wrote:

[Chop earlier stuff]

Steve,

Tried that. It didn't correct the thing. Presumably, the references are in
the boot sector further along.

Thanks.

John,

I have an older release of Seagate disk management software on CD that
includes utilities for removing the overlay and the boot sector
information but they aren't easy to figure out. Does your CD or Seagate
have something similar to try? I seem to recall years ago running into a
very similar issue and it was a pain in the butt to find out how to fix
but it was fixable.

Steve

 

[Steve N.]

LO Again,

The system's original HDD had a reference to an (unwanted) Ontrack overlay
added to its MBR when a second HDD was added. Removal of the overlay from the
new disk has not removed the reference from the original. This has disabled
the multi-boot manager (PowerQuest BootMagic) which cannot be re-enabled with
the reference still in place. Seagate, who supplied the new disk and
installation software, say we need to re-initialise the disk in order to get
rid of the unwanted data in the MBR.

[Chop]


Did you try to simply boot to the cd, use the repair option/advanced
recovery console and re-format the MBR???

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?
scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q291/9/80.ASP&N
oWebContent=1

Pagefile to small can be changed booting in to safe mode....Happened to
me the other day when it was accidently wiped out. Safe mode created a
temp that allowed me to run it.

ByTor,

Tried the first one: No difference. W2K won't boot into safe mode; just
stalls.

Thanks.

Just for clarity sake... Safe Mode is not the same as Recovery Console.
Are you saying you can't boot from the 2K CD and get into Recovery
Console? If you can then try running FIXMBR and also CHKDSK /P. One of
them should be able to rewrite the MBR and boot sector. Sorry if you
already have tried this.

There are other disk utilities out there that should be able to re-write
the MBR and boot sector, one is called BOOT.EXE (if you go searching for
it be careful there are some trojans out there with the same name) but
you'll need to have it first get a good MBR and Boot Sector written to
files from a working machine.

If you can't find it easily let me know and I'll email a copy of it to you.

Steve

 

[John Thow]

Boot from a Win98 CD or Floppy and run FDISK /MBR. That will replace the
MBR with a generic one and does not result in any data loss on the drive.

Steve

John Thow wrote:


LO Again,

The system's original HDD had a reference to an (unwanted) Ontrack overlay
added to its MBR when a second HDD was added. Removal of the overlay from the
new disk has not removed the reference from the original. This has disabled
the multi-boot manager (PowerQuest BootMagic) which cannot be re-enabled with
the reference still in place. Seagate, who supplied the new disk and
installation software, say we need to re-initialise the disk in order to get
rid of the unwanted data in the MBR.

[Chop earlier stuff]

Steve,

Tried that. It didn't correct the thing. Presumably, the references are in
the boot sector further along.

Thanks.

John,

I have an older release of Seagate disk management software on CD that
includes utilities for removing the overlay and the boot sector
information but they aren't easy to figure out. Does your CD or Seagate
have something similar to try? I seem to recall years ago running into a
very similar issue and it was a pain in the butt to find out how to fix
but it was fixable.

Steve

Steve,

There's a Seagate utility to remove the overlay - which I used to start with.
It removed it from the new drive but didn't remove the stuff on the original
drive. Now it doesn't seem to think there's anything on that drive for it to
remove: The option is "greyed out". (Unavailable.)

Thanks for that. If you could e-mail me the utility you have, I'll give that
a go. My reply-to address works with a little editing. ;-)

Cheers.






--
John Thow
an optimist is a guy/ that has never had/ much experience -
certain maxims of archie; Don Marquis.

To e-mail me, replace the DOTs in the Reply-To: address with dots!

 

[John Thow]

LO Again,

The system's original HDD had a reference to an (unwanted) Ontrack overlay
added to its MBR when a second HDD was added. Removal of the overlay from the
new disk has not removed the reference from the original. This has disabled
the multi-boot manager (PowerQuest BootMagic) which cannot be re-enabled with
the reference still in place. Seagate, who supplied the new disk and
installation software, say we need to re-initialise the disk in order to get
rid of the unwanted data in the MBR.

[Chop]


Did you try to simply boot to the cd, use the repair option/advanced
recovery console and re-format the MBR???

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?
scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q291/9/80.ASP&N
oWebContent=1

Pagefile to small can be changed booting in to safe mode....Happened to
me the other day when it was accidently wiped out. Safe mode created a
temp that allowed me to run it.

ByTor,

Tried the first one: No difference. W2K won't boot into safe mode; just
stalls.

Thanks.

Just for clarity sake... Safe Mode is not the same as Recovery Console.
Are you saying you can't boot from the 2K CD and get into Recovery
Console? If you can then try running FIXMBR and also CHKDSK /P. One of
them should be able to rewrite the MBR and boot sector. Sorry if you
already have tried this.

There are other disk utilities out there that should be able to re-write
the MBR and boot sector, one is called BOOT.EXE (if you go searching for
it be careful there are some trojans out there with the same name) but
you'll need to have it first get a good MBR and Boot Sector written to
files from a working machine.

If you can't find it easily let me know and I'll email a copy of it to you.

Steve

Hi again Steve,

I can (and have) booted from the W2K Cd and got into recovery console, but
Fixmbr from there didn't work either. I tried Safe mode from an attempted
load of the Ghost-ed disk: That just stalled (black screen).

Not sure about your BOOT.EXE idea. If it needs 'a good MBR & Boot Sector', I
suspect those'd have to be from a disk with the same geometry as the one I've
got trouble with. The only one I've got like that is the one with the
problem. If Boot.Exe allows you to save the MBR, I suppose I could Ghost
image the drive, re-partition & re-format with the same geometry, run Boot.exe
to save the MBR somewhere else, restore the image and re-run Boot.exe to
replace the MBR. Do you think that'd work?

Thanks again for looking at this.

lol

--
John Thow
an optimist is a guy/ that has never had/ much experience -
certain maxims of archie; Don Marquis.

To e-mail me, replace the DOTs in the Reply-To: address with dots!

 

[Steve N.]

John Thow wrote:

LO Again,

The system's original HDD had a reference to an (unwanted) Ontrack overlay
added to its MBR when a second HDD was added. Removal of the overlay from the
new disk has not removed the reference from the original. This has disabled
the multi-boot manager (PowerQuest BootMagic) which cannot be re-enabled with
the reference still in place. Seagate, who supplied the new disk and
installation software, say we need to re-initialise the disk in order to get
rid of the unwanted data in the MBR.


[Chop]



Did you try to simply boot to the cd, use the repair option/advanced
recovery console and re-format the MBR???

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?
scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q291/9/80.ASP&N
oWebContent=1

Pagefile to small can be changed booting in to safe mode....Happened to
me the other day when it was accidently wiped out. Safe mode created a
temp that allowed me to run it.



ByTor,

Tried the first one: No difference. W2K won't boot into safe mode; just
stalls.

Thanks.

Just for clarity sake... Safe Mode is not the same as Recovery Console.
Are you saying you can't boot from the 2K CD and get into Recovery
Console? If you can then try running FIXMBR and also CHKDSK /P. One of
them should be able to rewrite the MBR and boot sector. Sorry if you
already have tried this.

There are other disk utilities out there that should be able to re-write
the MBR and boot sector, one is called BOOT.EXE (if you go searching for
it be careful there are some trojans out there with the same name) but
you'll need to have it first get a good MBR and Boot Sector written to
files from a working machine.

If you can't find it easily let me know and I'll email a copy of it to you.

Steve

Hi again Steve,

I can (and have) booted from the W2K Cd and got into recovery console, but
Fixmbr from there didn't work either. I tried Safe mode from an attempted
load of the Ghost-ed disk: That just stalled (black screen).

Not sure about your BOOT.EXE idea. If it needs 'a good MBR & Boot Sector', I
suspect those'd have to be from a disk with the same geometry as the one I've
got trouble with. The only one I've got like that is the one with the
problem. If Boot.Exe allows you to save the MBR, I suppose I could Ghost
image the drive, re-partition & re-format with the same geometry, run Boot.exe
to save the MBR somewhere else, restore the image and re-run Boot.exe to
replace the MBR. Do you think that'd work?

Thanks again for looking at this.

lol

Hmmm... The whole MBR thing was throwing me off... I think what you'd
have to do is backup the boot sector of a working disk (with no geometry
translation) then write it to the disk you're having a problem with.
Boot.exe can do this. I think what you've been trying has been backing
up and re-writing the same boot sector containing the geometry
translation to the disk.

Anyway, I'll send the program to you. If you boot from a Win98 floppy
with boot.exe on it and type BOOT /? it'll give you the switches.

Good luck and let us know what happens!

Steve

 

[John Thow]

Finally cracked it!

Scrabbling around the PowerQuest (now Symantec) site, I found a
reference to the error Partition Magic was giving me. It told me that,
to get rid of the unwanted reference in the boot sector, use FDISK /CMBR
<Drive Number>. Although the information I subsequently found at
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000175.htm says the /CMBR parameter
does the same thing as /MBR - except that you can use it on drives other than
the primary master -, I'd previously tried /MBR without success so /CMBR must
do something slightly different. (Wouldn't it be nice if all the features of
Micro$oft utilities were documented???)

Thanks to all those who helped me through this one.


--
John Thow
an optimist is a guy/ that has never had/ much experience -
certain maxims of archie; Don Marquis.

To e-mail me, replace the DOTs in the Reply-To: address with dots!

 

[ByTor]

Finally cracked it!

Scrabbling around the PowerQuest (now Symantec) site, I found a
reference to the error Partition Magic was giving me. It told me that,
to get rid of the unwanted reference in the boot sector, use FDISK /CMBR
<Drive Number>. Although the information I subsequently found at
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000175.htm says the /CMBR parameter
does the same thing as /MBR - except that you can use it on drives other than
the primary master -, I'd previously tried /MBR without success so /CMBR must
do something slightly different. (Wouldn't it be nice if all the features of
Micro$oft utilities were documented???)

Thanks to all those who helped me through this one.


--
John Thow
an optimist is a guy/ that has never had/ much experience -
certain maxims of archie; Don Marquis.

To e-mail me, replace the DOTs in the Reply-To: address with dots!

C-M-B-R Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

YA Blasted it!!! (LOL)

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/123/lecture-1/cmbr.html


Glad to hear it worked out........ ;0)

 

[Steve N.]

/CMBR (from what I read after a Yahoo searh) allows you to specify a
specific drive to write an MBR to.

Glad you got it fixed John.

steve