how do i fix mbr, boot sector, loader on a partition?

The Fat Bastid

New Member
A friend has a vista machine that gave a bcd error. He then chkdsked it and now it longer appears in the recovery options when he boots from the vista dvd.

I set it up as an external drive to my computer and the file system seems ok. all the files are there. It just doesn't boot.

being unfamiliar with easybcd, How can i use it to fix this drive without accidentally screwing up my own drive?

My machine, the one this drive is now plugged into, is an xp machine.

thank you very much!
 
Are you running Vista on your machine? Get the drive letter and replace for x: in the following:

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=x:\ /offwindir=x:\windows\

Sometimes multiple runs of chkdsk using /r can help:

chkdsk x: /r
 
A friend has a vista machine that gave a bcd error. He then chkdsked it and now it longer appears in the recovery options when he boots from the vista dvd.

I set it up as an external drive to my computer and the file system seems ok. all the files are there. It just doesn't boot.

being unfamiliar with easybcd, How can i use it to fix this drive without accidentally screwing up my own drive?

My machine, the one this drive is now plugged into, is an xp machine.

thank you very much!

Try Partition Table Doctor 3.5. A Very Useful Tool. You can be rest assured that it will rebuild your partition table and mbr. It is available in bootcd, floppy and windows installer versions.
 
I too have a Vista problem...upon boot comes up with NTLDR missing...tried the process in the post of booting from Recovery CD...selecting language...repair...no operating system is shown....that's as far as I get....?????

HELP......any ideas.....

Thanks

BIGDOG03
 
Disconnect any other HDDs before trying the repair if you have more than one HDD.
If you only have one, make sure that Vista is marked "active" before trying the repair.
If still no OS, try clicking "next" on the screen with no OS shown. Sometimes that will complete the first repair and the OS will magically reappear for the second and third repairs.
 
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