MBRecord

  • Thread starter Thread starter OnlyMe
  • Start date Start date
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OnlyMe

I booted up this morning and it stopped booting almost at once
with the error " Master boot record compressed " I used a Ghost
image to restore my OS, BUT could I have done any other way
of restore,and if yes, How would that be accomplished, I do not
know how this happened, would have liked to have known what
caused It to be so.
Thank you
With kind regards From OZ
 
OnlyMe said:
I booted up this morning and it stopped booting almost at once
with the error " Master boot record compressed " I used a Ghost
image to restore my OS, BUT could I have done any other way
of restore,and if yes, How would that be accomplished, I do not
know how this happened, would have liked to have known what
caused It to be so.
Thank you
With kind regards From OZ
Click to expand...
I have tried the ghost {bootdisk} and used it to override the
MBR but it did not help , also I used the " Compress " C:\
right click on the C:\ icon in control panel, could this have been
my problem ?
 
OnlyMe said:
I booted up this morning and it stopped booting almost at once
with the error " Master boot record compressed " I used a Ghost
image to restore my OS, BUT could I have done any other way
of restore,and if yes, How would that be accomplished, I do not
know how this happened, would have liked to have known what
caused It to be so.
Thank you
With kind regards From OZ
Click to expand...

I have never heard of the Master Boot Record being compressed, it is a
strange error message. Are you giving us the *exact* error message as
it is shown on your screen?

I think that the message probably relates to ntldr being compressed.
Try booting to the Recovery Console and issue the FIXMBR command on the
disk, this will rewrite the Master Boot Record, if the MBR is indeed
compressed rewriting it should take care of the error.

To "decompress" ntldr while booted to the Recovery Console issue the
following commands (pressing <Enter> after each):

CD \
ATTRIB -C NTLDR

Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

John
 
OnlyMe said:
I booted up this morning and it stopped booting almost at once
with the error " Master boot record compressed " I used a Ghost
image to restore my OS, BUT could I have done any other way
of restore,and if yes, How would that be accomplished, I do not
know how this happened, would have liked to have known what
caused It to be so.
Thank you
With kind regards From OZ
Click to expand...

Odd, believe the compression thing only compressed the filesystem of the
selected partition. Further, partition(s) are independent of the master
boot record in that regard. Further, how would the bios be able to
interpret if a master boot record was compressed vs unreadable, corrupted or
not? Smell a hoodwink here...
 
I booted up this morning and it stopped booting almost at once
with the error " Master boot record compressed " I used a Ghost
image to restore my OS, BUT could I have done any other way
of restore,and if yes, How would that be accomplished, I do not
know how this happened, would have liked to have known what
caused It to be so.
Thank you
With kind regards From OZ
Click to expand...

The Master Boot Record should never be compress or edited. If the MBR
is corrupted, your drive will not boot correctly.
 
you might try booting
with your windows cd
and logging into the
repair/recovery console.

then run the following
commands at the disk
prompt>:

chkdsk
fixmbr
fixboot

then exit and try
booting again and
without the cd.

--

db·´¯`·...¸><)))º>
DatabaseBen, Retired Professional
- Systems Analyst
- Database Developer
- Accountancy
- Veteran of the Armed Forces
 
thanks to all
the error message was as stated, under no circumstances would I
try to hoodwink anyone on this NG, I am 73 and never play games
with anyone here, three of the emails submitted was gratefully received
Thanks again from Bill in OZ
 
Did not assign responsibility to the "hoodwink". The message itself is
bogus. Its sad you took it as a personal affront.
 
thanks to all
the error message was as stated, under no circumstances would I
try to hoodwink anyone on this NG, I am 73 and never play games
with anyone here, three of the emails submitted was gratefully
received Thanks again from Bill in OZ
Click to expand...


It's too late now, but restoring to a Restore Point MIGHT have helped;
though I don't know that for a fact.

I just had a look with a hex editor and that error message is indeed
part of that program. No idea what caused it, but it is legitimate.
It almost sounds like Ghost didn't decompress some files before
putting them back, OR the whole C drive was marked to be compressed
first, causing everything Ghost did to take on the compressed form.
Didn't know it could do that, but Ghost does fix the MBR when you do a
complete disaster recovery with it, so ... sounds half-fast plausible.

What version of Ghost do you have? XP Home or Pro?

I would suggest getting out the Recovery CD, set the PC BIOS to boot
from PC if not already set, and boot up. Then proceed with a full
recovery.
Or if you kept partial backups, like say, one of just the working OS,
you could try that, too. But do not allow yourself or the programs to
set the drive to Compressed. Compression is controlled by looking in
Properties Advanced for any of your drives.

If that fails, since it's fairly quick to do, then I'd try using Ghost
to restore to an earlier date if you have any.

And if that fails, save a brainstorm, I suspect all you'll be able to do
is start over from scratch with a clean install of XP where you
delete/recreate the partitions, format, and rebuild all your
applications, etc.; Set aside a few hours for that, and be sure not to
connect to the internet until you have antivirus installed and hopefully
a firewall.

Do not kill off your Ghost backups: keep them safe. You could likely
still use most of the data except the OS parts, by deselecting them in
the explorer-like window.

Let us know what happens? There's an overload of less than good
responses lately on this group; just ignore them and pick out the
meaningful sounding ones.

Twayne
 
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