[Resolved] MBR overwritten

[bitsmart]

Hi folks,

I was trying to install Linux on my Windows machine and have it dual boot. The MBR got overwritten as LILO, but Linux and LILO weren't installed correctly and now I can't boot Windows or Linux. I can't find my Windows disk, and to make this even trickier, I don't have a floppy drive. I tried rewriting the MBR with fdisk, but it said it couldn't overwrite it.

Does anyone know of a toolkit or something that can be burned on bootable CD that may help me?

Thanks in advance,

-Drew

 

[Bryan]

The only chance I could see of recovering would be a boot to the XP CD and a repair. From the repair console command line you would enter the command FIXMBR but you really need to find the CD. You may even be able to use anyone's XP CD to repair it if you know anyone running XP but I'm not 100 percent sure of that. I don't know if the repair goes so far as to care about the product key differences.

Maybe someone else will come along with other suggestions ...

 

[JohnWill]

I have a pair of utilities I use for installing older O/S versions after 2K or XP are installed. They will also allow manipulation of the boot records.

You can also download a CD image from www.bootdisk.com that will create a bootable MS-DOS CD that you can use to kill off LILO in the boot record with an FDISK /MBR

BOOTPART - Manipulate multi-boot menu and fix 2K/XP boot files.

BOOTSECT - Read/Write MBR and save to disk

 

[bitsmart]

I was able to find my XP CD and fix the problem, thanks to those who replied.

 

[Bryan]

Glad to hear you're ok now. If you get time, please let us know what you did to fix it. Thanks ....