fixmbr

[MHS Mom]

Does fixmbr or fixboot erase the data on the hdd? Running XP home, and it
won't boot. chkdsk says invalid drive although recovery console gives me a C:
Thanks

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Does fixmbr or fixboot erase the data on the hdd? Running XP home, and it
won't boot. chkdsk says invalid drive although recovery console gives me a
C:
Thanks

No, it doesn't erase data, but if you are having problems as you describe,
the *first* step is to attach the drive to another system and copy off any
data that you actually need to have.

This is quick and easy to do, and is the step that can prevent complete data
loss. At most, you'll need to spend $20 or so on a USB drive case or
adapter.

HTH
-pk

 

[MHS Mom]

I wasn't sure another computer could read it. Bart's PE can't see the drive
and Knoppix can't mount it.

 

[neil]

Could be the drive has failed. I assume you have used a boot CD for both
Bart PE & Knoppix, if so you would normally be able to read the contents of
the hard drive with either of those boot disks.
If you can try fitting the drive to another PC as the "slave" or second
drive and see what happens, if that cannot read the disk then I'm afraid you
may be fighting a losing battle.
Neil

 

[Twayne]

Does fixmbr or fixboot erase the data on the hdd? Running XP home,
and it won't boot. chkdsk says invalid drive although recovery
console gives me a C: Thanks

Not sure why folks aren't saying to go ahead and try fixmbr and fixboot.
You could easily have corruption in the system area that would cause
that.
They don't "erase" techincally, but they DO write the correct data to
those drive locations for your system. The old data is gone forever, of
course, but you have little to lose and much to gain since the drive
doesn't exist to your OS right now.
They're easy to use and pretty straight forward.

Trying the drive in another computer is not a bad idea either if you
have that capability. I say "if" because you also need to be aware of
what jumper settings to use if it's an IDE drive which you didn't
mention. It's possible it'll work in another computer if set as a
Slave, which would at least let you get your data off it.
Installing it as a Master in another computer would most likely get
the same results as you originally had so it'd probably be wise to
switch it over to Slave (remembering to set the other drive to Master,
ets) and back up all of your data. For portability back to your machine
you'd probably want to burn the data to DVDs your machine can read.
Then again it might fail as a Slave too; hard to say.
Remember to set the second machine's drive jumpers back to where they
originally were, and do a test boot with it before you quit, just as a
quick check.

HTH,

Twayne`

 

[db]

well, it could
be said that they
will erase the old
data

but the commands
will replace them with
correct data.

in addition, you might
also want to run
chkdsk /p.

if you are at the disk
prompt do the commands
in this order:

chkdsk /p
fixmbr
fixboot

then exit

--

db·´¯`·...¸><)))º>
DatabaseBen, Retired Professional
- Systems Analyst
- Database Developer
- Accountancy
- Veteran of the Armed Forces
- Microsoft Partner
- @hotmail.com
~~~~~~~~~~"share the nirvana" - dbZen

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I wasn't sure another computer could read it. Bart's PE can't see the
drive
and Knoppix can't mount it.

Then fixmbr is probably not the tool to use.

Do try attaching it to another system. This is quick and cheap and will
give you much more information about where you stand.

Your concern should not be to make it work but to just recover data from it.
But all data recovery software relies on the drive being detected. If the
drive won't mount and isn't detected properly, if it has failed
electrically, software can't help you.

New drives are cheap, yours is likely failing. If you get it to work, it
will likely collapse again. Remove the old drive, get a new drive, install
XP to that, and take your next steps.

Stop and consider the value of the data. If the drive won't mount on any
OS and isnt' recognised on any PC, you may have to take it to a specialised
data recovery service. These services can disassemble the drives and
attach the platters to custom (expensive) controllers.

All of the times I've used these services, the bills have started at around
CDN$1000, depending on amount of data and turnaround time.

HTH
-pk