"Master boot record error"

[HomeAppraiser]

My kids done gone and "F"ed up their HP a850 computer. It has Windows XP home with a recovery sector on the hard drive (D) and I have the recovery DVDs, but it won't let me boot from the DVD/CD drive!

I restarted the computer with the recovery DVD in, and no recovery started. I also went into BIOS and changed from where to boot from, no luck.

Edit: Checked all connections inside the box. Also it has one SATA HD.

 

[HomeAppraiser]

bump

 

[Smilin]

"Master Boot Record error" sounds like a vendor specific error relating to a failed read of sector zero on the hard disk. Usually triggered by a missing end of sector marker (55aa).

locate a copy of disksave.exe on the net. It's a dos utility you can run from a boot diskette to let you save off a copy of your MBR.

Get a copy of your MBR in hand then send me a PM. I'll pop it open in diskprobe and see what we have.




If anyone comes along in this thread and tells you to run an fdisk/mbr or a fixmbr don't do it! If your end of sector marker is missing fixmbr will zero your entire partition table. fdisk/mbr will put the wrong mbr on.

 

[HomeAppraiser]

I am only getting a clicking sound from the hard drive 🙁 HP has it vertically mounted to the inside/front of the case instead of flat under the dvd drive. I am thinking I need to get the windows disk from HP, a new hard drive and start over 🙁 🙁 It is only the kids computer so no data loss.

 

[Smilin]

yeah, if you're click of deathing and don't have any important data on there it's not even worth the freezer trick.

🙁

 

[statikuz]

Yeah, I would just snag a new drive and axe the old one if there's no data that you need to recover. Noises from drives are bad.

 

[HomeAppraiser]

Originally posted by: Smilin
yeah, if you're click of deathing and don't have any important data on there it's not even worth the freezer trick.

🙁

What's the freezer trick? If it will let me access the HP windows recovery partition I'll try it.

Looking for a quick replacement I see this one on sale. The box states that it is an 7200 rpm "Ultra Performance ATA/133", my kids had a 7200 rpm SATA Hard Drive in the HP attached to the motherboard with a red SATA cable. Is that the same thing?

Edit: Looks like that's a no. I am finding a bunch of SATA's on line.

 

[statikuz]

Sometimes you can pop a hard disk in the freezer for a couple of hours and it will let a physically damaged drive run for a little while, no guarantee whatsoever. =) As far as a replacment drive goes, any of:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi...ption=&srchInDesc=&minPrice=&maxPrice=

...should be just fine.

 

[airjrdn]

You might also try booting up w/a Bart PE disk and running DriveImage XML on it to see if it can make an image of the partition in question. You'll need to add DriveImage XML to the Bart PE disk, but it's fairly straightforward to do.