Missing MBR

I am repairing my cousins Toshiba Equium A300D. He had loads of viruses and kept getting stuck on 'windows could not be loads please press ok to shutdown' message when waiting for the desktop to show up. So I took the HDD out and tried in a universal adapter and both windows 7 and Xp computers say it needs to be format do u want to format it now I clicked No. He needs photos from it. Is there a way to get them. I had use esuase(sp) recovery software before and it got most of my files I needed, after formatting it.

He had vista on it now I can no longer get the recovery partition. I have the Hinkos Ultimate Boot CD tried the fix boot no luck.

Any ideas?

 

you can try running ubuntu from a live cd/usb stick, it don't care about windows permissions and other stuff, it MAY let you recover all the pictures/data....good luck..
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download (choose option #3) and you MAY be able to run it on the troubled computer!

 

It won't let me boot win7 DVD. Thanks I'll try that tomorrow morning.

 

Ok ubuntu did nit load the vista loccal disk but did loather recovery section partition aim now running HDD Regenerator 1.51 from henkos ultimate CD. So far 3 bad sectors found and still running how long will this take. I told my cousin to buy a new HDD which looks like the hard drive is a major fault.

 

Well the HD may only be one part of the problem. Because you said the Vista DVD will not load also. If it is still under warrenty, I would take it in for repairs.

 

It is out of warranty so I ordered him a new HDD. Will report back.