Restore Boot Sector

[George W. Barrowcliff]

I have an intermittant error during boot up that appears to be a corrupt
boot record.

How can I replace just the boot record only?

TIA

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have an intermittant error during boot up that appears to be a corrupt
boot record.

How can I replace just the boot record only?

TIA

What exactly is the error message?

 

[George W. Barrowcliff]

No operating system found

What exactly is the error message?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

If the boot record was corrupt then you would see this
message every time. Furthermore, you would be unable
to boot.

The intermittent nature of the message suggests that
the BIOS has an occasional problem reading the MBR
(Master Boot Record). This could be caused by one
of the following:
a) Marginal IDE ribbon cable => try another cable.
b) Marginal controller circuit on the hard disk => play with
a retired disk from your computer dealer to confirm
this suspicion. Is the problem temperature-dependent?
c) Hard disk incorrectly jumpered. Many disks make a
distinction between "Master, Slave present" and
"Single Master". => check your jumpers.
d) Marginal IDE controller on the motherboard. =>
Ask your computer dealer for advice.

You can safely rewrite your MBR with the following
method, provided that your machine does not use a
proprietary disk compression method and that it is
not infected with a virus. However, I don't expect it
to make any difference.

- Boot the machine with your WinXP CD.
- Select Repair and start the Recovery Console.
- Type this command: fixmbr

 

[Rich Barry]

George, you can do that by booting into the Recovery Console. Check here
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/EN-US/ You will be interested
in FixBoot and FixMBR