Problems with master boot record

[colleen medin]

Had partition magic's bootmagic installed. It worked fine until I had to
reinstall xp. Now I have a text version of bootmagic (I think) & am unable
to redo the master boot record. Tried win2k & winxp install cd no banana.
They both realized we had a later version of os & I couldn't get to the
recovery console to do a 'fixmbr'. I am not clear how bootmagic got into its
text mode but I am unable to get back to the bootmagic I remember. HELP! TIA

 

[Patti MacLeod]

Hi colleen,

What you are seeing is not a text version of bootmagic, but is the menu from
XP's bootloader, files that were placed on the first system partition (C
drive) when you did the reinstall of XP. I am assuming that Boot Magic was
disabled when you did the OS reinstall and it may still be installed on the
partition on which you originally installed it.

Before proposing any possible solutions, could you please relay some
information about your set up on that computer (i.e., what OSes are
installed and on which drive letters).



Regards,

 

[Lil' Dave]

The symptoms don't follow the your observations, rather, they are reversed.
MS OS installs or reinstalls overwrite the MBR. That is where bootmagic's
text file menu comes from. The remaining menu file material is stored in an
actual partition.
The symptoms should be that you lost use of bootmagic entirely after the XP
reinstall.
The symptoms you describe are normal if you deleted the file information for
bootmagic. This can be by simply deleting the files themselves, the source
folder, or deleting the partition where these files are contained entirely.
The MBR would be untouched in this case, and the text version of bootmagic
would continue to work.