Another corrupt MBR?

[rl5]

I stumbled into this forum while searching for data recovery software and discovered alot of great advice and tips. I need some opinions re: my hard drive problem - any help will be appreciated.

I have a Maxtor Ultra 160GB drive with 3 partitions - only a couple of months old, in my Win2K computer. Now for several weeks (going back before I installed the Maxtor drive) my system has been randomly shuting down in an odd way - sometimes after I select Windows "Shut Down", the system shuts down immediately - no shut down process, the screen just goes blank and then the system re-boots. This doesn't happen all the time, and I usually let the system re-boot, then do a clean shut down. I've been using this same OS image for over 2 years, and I assumed that it was time to re-build my system, but I haven't had the time to troubleshoot this, and I haven't had any problems until yesterday. I had just shut down the system when it started to re-boot, and I hit the power button during the BIOS startup so that the computer woudn't re-start (I had never done this before - I had always let the system re-boot after the "cold" shut down). When I tried to re-start, I got the "No boot disk found" error. First I ran PartitionMagic from a floppy - it could see the drive, but it only read 2 patitions, and one of them was reported bad. I checked for errors and PM reported 2 - "Patition improperly dismounted" and "Cluster cross-linked or not allocated". So I loaded up the Win2K Recovery Console and tried to run Chkdsk, but it would not run because there were "one or more unrecoverable errors". Then I d/led PowerMax from the Maxtor web site and ran its tests against the drive, including the long burn test. It reported no errors with the drive.

At this point I am trying to decide whether I should run FIXBOOT and/or FIXMBR. I suppose I have nothing left to lose, but I have been searching the web trying to find out:
1) if there is a better solution, and
2) if there have been any successes with FIXBOOT/FIXMBR. I have read a few website/forum posts from people who have used FIXMBR and screwed up their drive even more. I have fresh data on the drive that was too new to make it into the last backup. I will need to do some sort of data recovery on the drive, so I don't want to make it worse by doing more damage with FIX*.

I would appreciate hearing your opinions. Also, I would appreciate recommedations of data recovery software. I am currently looking at HardDrive Mechanic.

TIA.

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!

if you stick around long enough someone always has the answer, lol.

I found this much but I dont know from experience which one you should use...I do know I have read that one is oreferred over the other in certain situations

Fixboot. The Fixboot command can save you from disasters such as inadvertently installing NT or Windows 9x after you've installed Win2K Pro—in which case you can't boot Win2K Pro. Fixboot writes a new boot sector that makes the drive bootable and takes one argument—the drive letter to run on. For example,

fixboot c:
writes a new boot sector on the C drive.

Fixmbr. The Fixmbr command attempts to fix the boot partition's Master Boot Record (MBR) and might help you resolve the problem when the system refuses to boot. The command takes one argument—the name of the device that needs a new MBR. If you leave the name blank, Fixmbr will write the new MBR to the default boot device (usually your C drive).

[John Prophet]

ok, fixmbr is the new equivilant of the older fdisk/mbr

"The Recovery Console, a new troubleshooting tool in Windows 2000, offers a feature called Fixmbr. However, it functions identically to the Fdisk /mbr command, replacing only the master boot code and not affecting the partition table. For this reason, it is also unlikely to help resolve an infected MBR."

[John Prophet]

and fixboot----->

"Replacing the Boot Sector with the Emergency Repair Process

If the boot sector cannot find Ntldr, Windows 2000 cannot start. This condition can be caused by moving, renaming, or deleting Ntldr, corruption of Ntldr, or corruption of the boot sector. Under these circumstances, the computer might not respond to input or might display one of the following error messages:

A disk read error occurred.
NTLDR is missing.
NTLDR is compressed.
If Ntldr is damaged or missing, or if the boot sector is corrupted, you can resolve either problem by starting the Emergency Repair Process and following the prompts for repairing the installation using the Emergency Repair Disk (ERD). For more information about running the Emergency Repair Process and using the ERD, see "Troubleshooting Tools and Strategies" in this book..

Replacing the Boot Sector with the Recovery Console

You can also use the Recovery Console to replace the corrupted boot sector. To replace the boot sector.

If you do not specify a particular drive, the Recovery Console replaces the boot sector of the boot partition. If another volume's boot sector is corrupted, enter the Fixboot command, followed by a space, and then specify the drive letter with a colon."

[rl5]

Originally posted by John Prophet
ok, fixmbr is the new equivilant of the older fdisk/mbr

"The Recovery Console, a new troubleshooting tool in Windows 2000, offers a feature called Fixmbr. However, it functions identically to the Fdisk /mbr command, replacing only the master boot code and not affecting the partition table. For this reason, it is also unlikely to help resolve an infected MBR."

John.

Thanks for the very informative posts. If you have a link for this info please post it so I can add it to my personal knowledge base.

This part about FIXMBR only replacing the boot code and not affecting the partition tables - that is the biggest issue for me. If I run FIXMBR I want to be sure that my partition tables will survive intact. As I originally posted, I am looking at a program called Hard Drive Mechanic, which claims that it can determine the problem and even repair it. I am going to run the demo tonight and see what it reveals, then I suppose I will need to decide whether to invest in the program or just run FIXMBR.

Thanks again for the info - I look forward being involved with this forum.

[John Prophet]

its from microsofts site. And also from the "windows 2000 resource kit" and other places on their site.

I think it was from chapter 32...but I just searched for fixmbr and fixboot.





I have to give microsoft mad props on their site....I dislike some stuff about them of course but their site is a treasure trove and an education in one place!

Maybe one of the quotes was from another site altogether.

I paid $$$ for the actual paper (big books) resource kits for 2000,98, xp...well worth it I think. And the whole w2k server resource kit is a monster..but as I said, it would be a serious education just in itself.


Yeah man, stick around, this is a pretty cool forum...Ive learned a LOT here!

JP