If for some reason your computer just won’t boot up to Windows, you may be having an issue with the system’s Master Boot Record. Any sort of corruption from malicious code, disk errors, attempting to set up dual boot on the system can cause the Master Boot Record from working. The most common sign that your Master Boot Record is not working is when you boot and you only have a black screen with the words “No Operating System Found”. Since XP and Vista are the dominate Windows Operating Systems that people own we will focus on those two.
To fix the Master Boot Record for Windows XP, insert the Windows XP Installation CD. Boot up the computer and press a key when it says Boot from CD. There is a complete guide on how to start recovery console from a CD. The CD will begin to load the windows screen and prompt will come up. Press the R key which will start the repair of Windows XP installation. If the computer is using multiple operating systems, select the proper OS to repair. If you have only one operating system, enter 1 to select it.
You will be asked for the administrative password, if you have one. In the recovery console, in order to fix the MBR, type in the command fixmbr.
This is all assuming that your Windows XP installation is on the C:\ drive. Now some warning windows are going to come up that way scare you. Microsoft is drives home the point as to what the consequences are (losing everything on your hard drive), so use this at your own risk. You can just type y and ENTER to fix the MBR. Then you will type exit to leave the recovery console and reboot.
Now with Windows Vista the process is a bit different. There is a tool called Bootrec.exe that will repair the Master Boot record, the boot sector and the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) Store. Getting to the Bootrec.exe tool is just like the process for repairing for Windows XP.
You must start Windows Recovery Environment for the Bootrec.exe to be activated. Place the Windows Vista CD in the computer and restart the computer or start it if it is off. Press a key when you are prompted to boot from CD. You’ll be prompted to select language, time, currency, and keyboard then click next. You want to click on Repair your computer. Click on the operating system that you want to repair, if you have multiple operating systems on the machine then click next. In the System Recovery Options dialog box, click Command Prompt.
Type Bootrec.exe and then press ENTER. Bootrec.exe has several options but you want to type in to properly address the Master Boot Record. To activate the fix for the MBR you have to type in /FixMbr. This option will write the Windows Vista-compatible MBR to the selected system partition. This option won’t overwrite the existing partition table. Using this option should resolve all of your Master Boot record problems with corruption.
No comments yet.