Can't zero out or wipe MBR even after FDISR uninstall

[Horus37]

I'm trying to zero out hard drive and start with fresh install. However when trying to create a new MBR with fujitsu zero out program provided by oem it fails and says disk error. I tried fixmbr and fixboot but problem still persists with saying MBR is non standard or corrupted. I suppose that since FDISR was so deeply entrenched into the MBR that it's what is causing my inability to zero out the mbr and so my question is what is a good program that will zero out and do a low level format/wipe of hard drive? OEM product didn't work. Is there a MBR rebuild or wipe program that will get rid of ENTIRE MBR and BOOT record????

[Rilla927]

{QUOTE-> I'm trying to zero out hard drive and start with fresh install. However when trying to create a new MBR with fujitsu zero out program provided by oem it fails and says disk error. I tried fixmbr and fixboot but problem still persists with saying MBR is non standard or corrupted. I suppose that since FDISR was so deeply entrenched into the MBR that it's what is causing my inability to zero out the mbr and so my question is what is a good program that will zero out and do a low level format/wipe of hard drive? OEM product didn't work. Is there a MBR rebuild or wipe program that will get rid of ENTIRE MBR and BOOT record???? <-QUOTE} I take it you didn't make a copy of MBR when you installed FD.

Are you wiping the disk because of FD itself or just for a fresh start period. If it's a uninstall you need for FD just delete snaps (other than Primary) and then you will have the Primary left, when you uninstall FD it will take the Primary with it.

If you still need something to wipe the disk DBAN is free http://dban.sourceforge.net/

When you click on the CD and DVD Media it will let you d/l the ISO image, you will need to burn it to a CD and the you will be able to use it. Please read the instructions that come with it.

Do you have more than one HD? If so make sure DBAN doesn't wipe the other drives other than C drive.

[Horus37]

Well that's just it, I don't know if I was truly trojan or virus free before I installed FDISR so not sure if it's that or a boot sector virus or what. I've read about boot sector viruses remaining after a high level format. So I'm hoping to do a low level format and make sure the WHOLE MBR and boot sector are zero'd. However I have a problem now. I don't have any software that is capable of burning an ISO image onto a cd. I have a cdrw dvdrw but I didn't install the software. It currently just functions with xp homes default roxio burner that is standard on all xp home boxes. So I googled free iso image burner software but there are so many I'm not sure which one is good. Any clues? You'd think it would be easier to fully erase the total MBR but noooooooo. Fixmbr and fixboot do not fully erase and fully rewrite the WHOLE thing. Sheesh why can't this be easier. Anyhooters, I'll take any advice on which free iso burning image product would work for this. Some look kinda scarey.

Does FDISR lock out formatting of the MBR or what?

{QUOTE-> I take it you didn't make a copy of MBR when you installed FD.

Are you wiping the disk because of FD itself or just for a fresh start period. If it's a uninstall you need for FD just delete snaps (other than Primary) and then you will have the Primary left, when you uninstall FD it will take the Primary with it.

If you still need something to wipe the disk DBAN is free http://dban.sourceforge.net/

When you click on the CD and DVD Media it will let you d/l the ISO image, you will need to burn it to a CD and the you will be able to use it. Please read the instructions that come with it.

Do you have more than one HD? If so make sure DBAN doesn't wipe the other drives other than C drive. <-QUOTE}

[danieleb]

{QUOTE-> So I googled free iso image burner software but there are so many I'm not sure which one is good. Any clues? <-QUOTE}

IsoBuster can be a handy tool. You can use it as a free (limited) or pro version. I *think* the free version allows you to burn iso images. It's a great program that can do a lot of things, it (pro version) saved me once when I accidentally erased a dvd+rw with important school stuff. IsoBuster managed to recover the files.

http://www.isobuster.com/

Edit: No wait, thats probably not correct. You asked for burning software. Think IsoBuster just extracts images.:(

[Rilla927]

{QUOTE-> Well that's just it, I don't know if I was truly trojan or virus free before I installed FDISR <-QUOTE} If that's the case you were never sure I would wipe it and start over for a piece of mind. Do you have a floppy drive on this computer? If so, when you reinstall FD make sure you make a copy of the MBR and then put it in a safe place. {QUOTE-> so not sure if it's that or a boot sector virus or what. I've read about boot sector viruses remaining after a high level format. So I'm hoping to do a low level format and make sure the WHOLE MBR and boot sector are zero'd. However I have a problem now. I don't have any software that is capable of burning an ISO image onto a cd. I have a cdrw dvdrw but I didn't install the software. It currently just functions with xp homes default roxio burner that is standard on all xp home boxes. <-QUOTE} Well DBAN will do the trick and it doesn't take forever. I don't remember if you can send the ISO image directly to the cdrw drive to be burned through the OS itself. What is your operating system? The only one I'm familiar with and it works every time is Ashampoo Burning Suite. Try the above and see if it works, cuz if it does then you wouldn't need to d/l a free trial of Ashampoo Burning Suite http://www.ashampoo.com/frontend/products/php/product.php?session_langid=2&idstring=0710 {QUOTE-> You'd think it would be easier to fully erase the total MBR but noooooooo. <-QUOTE} It is, you just need the right tools and take it one step at a time and you will be fine. {QUOTE-> Does FDISR lock out formatting of the MBR or what? <-QUOTE} No, it does not. Do you have more than one HD?

[Peter2150]

Horus

Did you uninstall FDISR, or disable preboot. If you did either of those than FDISR isn't in the MBR. Also if you have a good image with a program like Acronis True Image, or Shadow Protect they will restore the mbr.

Pete

[Rilla927]

{QUOTE-> Horus

Did you uninstall FDISR, or disable preboot. If you did either of those than FDISR isn't in the MBR. Also if you have a good image with a program like Acronis True Image, or Shadow Protect they will restore the mbr.

Pete <-QUOTE} Ya he may have disabled it with out realizing it.

[Horus37]

{QUOTE-> Horus

Did you uninstall FDISR, or disable preboot. If you did either of those than FDISR isn't in the MBR. Also if you have a good image with a program like Acronis True Image, or Shadow Protect they will restore the mbr.

Pete <-QUOTE}


First I disabled the preboot then I uninstalled the whole program after I manually deleted each snapshot from inside the FDISR program. Then I went and deleted the remaining registry entries.

Program still won't let me have access to the MBR or EXMBR after downloading MBRWORK and MBR.EXE and running under dos. There is something definately inside my MBR now that is screwing things up big time. I ran across a website that talks about a tool that LOCKS the exmbr but don't know about anything locking the whole MBR. I got a program called "drop to dos" and even that with this is still not possible. I wonder if a format will even solve this? And NO I didn't delete anything in the registry that could be causing this.

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> First I disabled the preboot then I uninstalled the whole program after I manually deleted each snapshot from inside the FDISR program. Then I went and deleted the remaining registry entries.

Program still won't let me have access to the MBR or EXMBR after downloading MBRWORK and MBR.EXE and running under dos. There is something definately inside my MBR now that is screwing things up big time. I ran across a website that talks about a tool that LOCKS the exmbr but don't know about anything locking the whole MBR. I got a program called "drop to dos" and even that with this is still not possible. I wonder if a format will even solve this? And NO I didn't delete anything in the registry that could be causing this. <-QUOTE}

Well if you successfully disabled preboot, FDISR had nothing in your mbr.

I am not sure why you are even trying to do this, but....

1) Do you have any images you can restore, and if so with what.

2) Is your computer usable, and if so try resinstalling FDISR.

3) Have you tried running Fixmbr from your windows CD

[Horus37]

{QUOTE-> Well if you successfully disabled preboot, FDISR had nothing in your mbr.

I am not sure why you are even trying to do this, but....

1) Do you have any images you can restore, and if so with what.

2) Is your computer usable, and if so try resinstalling FDISR.

3) Have you tried running Fixmbr from your windows CD[/QUOTE


Everything that was worth anything was backed up to cd so I don't care about restoring anything. Figured I do a fresh reinstall and thats when I ran into MBR problems. To my knowledge FDISR was the only thing in the MBR that could be causing a non standard notice when trying to write a new one or zeroing it out. No program I've tried so far out of 6 has worked to delete or zero or rewrite this mbr or embr. Something is wrong here. I also downloaded DBAN and it even sees some extra partition I was unaware of. I've never had 2 seperate partitions on this computer and I"ve never used a partitioning program on it so I'm at a loss why my MBR is fried and locked me out. This is pissing me off. Reinstalling FDISR is worthless as I don't want to take snapshots of a corrupted mbr. I guess I'll run dban and see if it still sees 2 partitions after it's been nuked.

[starfish_001]

Like Peter I'm a bit confused but if you have a backup - and you want to zero the drive - mbr. You could use Maxtor or other vendor floppies

Like

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.3c67e325e0a6b1f6294198b091346068/?channelpath=%2Fen_us%2FSupport%2FSoftware+Downloads%2FView+By+Category%2FDesktop+Storage%2FDiamondMax+Family%2FUtilities&downloadID=57

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> {QUOTE-> Well if you successfully disabled preboot, FDISR had nothing in your mbr.

I am not sure why you are even trying to do this, but....

1) Do you have any images you can restore, and if so with what.

2) Is your computer usable, and if so try resinstalling FDISR.

3) Have you tried running Fixmbr from your windows CD[/QUOTE


Everything that was worth anything was backed up to cd so I don't care about restoring anything. Figured I do a fresh reinstall and thats when I ran into MBR problems. To my knowledge FDISR was the only thing in the MBR that could be causing a non standard notice when trying to write a new one or zeroing it out. No program I've tried so far out of 6 has worked to delete or zero or rewrite this mbr or embr. Something is wrong here. I also downloaded DBAN and it even sees some extra partition I was unaware of. I've never had 2 seperate partitions on this computer and I"ve never used a partitioning program on it so I'm at a loss why my MBR is fried and locked me out. This is pissing me off. Reinstalling FDISR is worthless as I don't want to take snapshots of a corrupted mbr. I guess I'll run dban and see if it still sees 2 partitions after it's been nuked. <-QUOTE}

Horus

Quite candidly you are your own worst enemy. You aren't listening.

1) if FDISR properly uninstalled then your MBR is back to standard.
2) you never really answered if you made the MBR floppy like FDISR asks you to. If so that would also fix any problems.
3) Reinstalling FDISR (and then uninstalliing it again) is not worthless. IF FDISR did cause a problem, this well might fix it.
4) You keep looking for all these utilities, but you haven't tried FIXMBR which is on your Windows CD. Saying you are going to do a fresh install implies you have this.

Pete

[Leapfrog Software]

Greetings Horus37,

Thanks for your interest in our technology. Just to put your mind at ease, the modifications that we put into the MBR are few small. We read your MBR, add less than 50 bytes of assembly code, and write the MBR back to the same location. Our ISR technologies do not lock or hide the MBR or any other part of your bootstrap process. Although we have our pre-boot code that we "JMP" to from the MBR, the actual modifications to your existing bootstrap process are very minimal. This is by design.

-Todd

[Horus37]

{QUOTE-> {QUOTE->

Horus

Quite candidly you are your own worst enemy. You aren't listening.

1) if FDISR properly uninstalled then your MBR is back to standard.
2) you never really answered if you made the MBR floppy like FDISR asks you to. If so that would also fix any problems.
3) Reinstalling FDISR (and then uninstalliing it again) is not worthless. IF FDISR did cause a problem, this well might fix it.
4) You keep looking for all these utilities, but you haven't tried FIXMBR which is on your Windows CD. Saying you are going to do a fresh install implies you have this.

Pete <-QUOTE}


Perhaps you didn't fully read my posts above since you wrongfully think I haven't tried FIXMBR. That was one of the 6 programs I tried to run to get the issue solved. It said that the MBR is non standard or corrupted. FIXMBR, FIXBOOT, MBR.EXE, MBRWORK, the OEM erase disk and even a dos utility to make sure all were being run under dos was all tried and NONE OF THEM worked. So you tell me what could be causing this? From my knowledge FDISR is the only thing that ever got into the MBR and if somehow it wasn't then installing it did something. I disabled the pre boot then uninstalled the program and that is when I discovered the MBR problem, not before or during use of the program which I had no issues with until I tried to uninstall it. SO my last resort was DBAN and even that had a partition on it that had no name as one of the choices to nuke besides the host. So I nuked the whole hard drive. Then I see on here right after I rebuild my machine I could have downloaded a free beta that addresses the MBR incompatibility issues between programs. I emailed the support team and they could have told me that they were releasing a beta the next day that might help with MBR issues. Now I hope I don't have to uninstall what I just did just to use the beta....What good would have the FDISR MBR backup done to my system without having FDISR on it. You imply that reinstalling the MBR would have solved something yet who knows it might have been corrupt after I installed FDISR or even before. So restoring a backed up MBR would just have reinstalled another corrupted MBR perhaps.

[Horus37]

{QUOTE-> Greetings Horus37,

Thanks for your interest in our technology. Just to put your mind at ease, the modifications that we put into the MBR are few small. We read your MBR, add less than 50 bytes of assembly code, and write the MBR back to the same location. Our ISR technologies do not lock or hide the MBR or any other part of your bootstrap process. Although we have our pre-boot code that we "JMP" to from the MBR, the actual modifications to your existing bootstrap process are very minimal. This is by design.

-Todd <-QUOTE}

Well the help came a day late. I already nuked my hard drive after talking with Raxco support the previous day about the MBR problem. Even with your mere 50 bytes of assembly code it still injects and thus there's the potential no matter how small the code is to corrupt something. I'm trying to remember if I ever put any programs in this that might have been hiding out in the MBR prior to FDISR install and I don't think so because just a month or so ago I rebuilt the hard drive from scratch so I could have a good hdd to image back to a new external USB. So basically this was a new machine with a new xp home reinstall that was only a few weeks old with no funky software on it but just the native bare bones xp home with comodo FW and avast AV. To me it seems like an uninstall of FDISR caused this MBR problem with such a fresh system I had. I wish I could have taken pictures of the screens to show you what the machine was saying when I was having MBR issues. This computer is a year old and so I doubt it's hardware related.

[Long View]

OT - I have just seen a post which mentions Raxco and the Forum we are in is Leapfrog. Are these one and the same thing ? is there only on FD-ISR ?

I have just tried a demo downloaded from Raxco which gave me problems - could not lock ? errors when I started. So I used Acronis to restore and, of course, had to then use the Acronis MBR to fix things - FR-ISR showing up on re boot.

Can Acronis and FD-ISR work together happily ?

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> OT - I have just seen a post which mentions Raxco and the Forum we are in is Leapfrog. Are these one and the same thing ? is there only on FD-ISR ?

I have just tried a demo downloaded from Raxco which gave me problems - could not lock ? errors when I started. So I used Acronis to restore and, of course, had to then use the Acronis MBR to fix things - FR-ISR showing up on re boot.

Can Acronis and FD-ISR work together happily ? <-QUOTE}

Leapfrog is the developer, and Raxco and 2 others distribute and provide support.

Did you uninstall FDISR first? If you restored your image prior to First Defense you should have had Acronis restore the image's mbr.

Yes FDISR and Acronis reside happily together.

[Long View]

{QUOTE->

Did you uninstall FDISR first? If you restored your image prior to First Defense you should have had Acronis restore the image's mbr.

Yes FDISR and Acronis reside happily together. <-QUOTE}

thanks - I installed FD - had an error message - restored an image made earlier.
when my pc booted the MBR was still the FDISR version so I then restored the
MBR from Acronis.

Unfortunately for me FDISR doesn't work. The error message I get is "unable to create static copy of active snapshot". The machine I'm testing on is due for a format and reinstall - so will try again later.

[Horus37]

Well I nuked my computer and no more issues with MBR. However I must say that even DBAN had an issue as it was seeing more than one partition that was [..... ] looking like that as an option to nuke below the official hdd partition that was c: fujitsu drive blah blah blah. I could have chosen the other partition to nuke but not sure what would have happened. I could choose the option and actually tabbed down to it to see what it was but it was a nameless partition. Very strange. So now post - nuke my computer is back and I'm pissed because the very next day after I announce my MBR problems and that I'm nuking my puter the FDRISR squad releases a new beta that addresses the MBR issue. HMMMM? With no lipstick and no vaseline I feel like I got bent over. Why not just own up to the idea it might not uninstall as well as one would hope? I 'll get an image of the system this time and see if when I uninstall the program again I get the same errors.
That should have been a warning up front to not try this program without having a backup image first. How many people here have actually fully uninstalled this program and then looked at their mbr after the fact? I bet no one.

[Rilla927]

{QUOTE-> Well I nuked my computer and no more issues with MBR. However I must say that even DBAN had an issue as it was seeing more than one partition that was [..... ] looking like that as an option to nuke below the official hdd partition that was c: fujitsu drive blah blah blah. I could have chosen the other partition to nuke but not sure what would have happened. I could choose the option and actually tabbed down to it to see what it was but it was a nameless partition. Very strange. So now post - nuke my computer is back and I'm pissed because the very next day after I announce my MBR problems and that I'm nuking my puter the FDRISR squad releases a new beta that addresses the MBR issue. HMMMM? With no lipstick and no vaseline I feel like I got bent over. Why not just own up to the idea it might not uninstall as well as one would hope? I 'll get an image of the system this time and see if when I uninstall the program again I get the same errors.
That should have been a warning up front to not try this program without having a backup image first. How many people here have actually fully uninstalled this program and then looked at their mbr after the fact? I bet no one. <-QUOTE} Horus I made a big mistake of doing off line boot defrags in snapshots other than the Primary (me not thinking) and I screwed my system up as well as Perfect Disk couldn't work correctly after that so I uninstalled Perfect Disk and deleted the secondary snap and uninstalled FD-ISR and my system was fine.

I then reinstalled Perfect Disk and then FD-ISR and everything was well.

[Long View]

The more I hear about this product the more concerned I become. Defraging caused problems and the same company makes both products ?

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> The more I hear about this product the more concerned I become. Defraging caused problems and the same company makes both products ? <-QUOTE}

Longview

I don't think there are any problems to be concerned about. Yes it is wise to do all defrags from the primary snapshot, but other than that no big deal. I do defrags, offline defrags, I've uninstalled bunches of times and no issues.

I don't think Horus's mbr problem had anything to do with FDISR and he really hasn't established that it has. He said he uninstalled it, and if there was no error's then the mbr was clean.

Also note that his complaining about them releasing a "fix" and not provided any warning, is also unfounded. What they changed in the beta wasn't to fix a problem perse, but to reduce conflicts if someone wanted to use another program that modifies the MBR. Big difference

What is essential is if you try FDISR, that you read the manual, and reread it. There is good information there so you can understand how this program works.

Pete

[Rilla927]

{QUOTE-> The more I hear about this product the more concerned I become. Defraging caused problems and the same company makes both products ? <-QUOTE} Please don't misunderstand. I made the mistake, there was nothing wrong with the programs. All system changes and maitenance I do in the Primary (as of now). Live and learn, I wasn't thinking.

I should not have done a off line boot defrag in anything other than the Primary. It's because I did this what caused the problem because the pagefile is only present in the Primary snapshot.

[Long View]

{QUOTE-> Please don't misunderstand. I made the mistake, there was nothing wrong with the programs. All system changes and maitenance I do in the Primary (as of now). Live and learn, I wasn't thinking.

I should not have done a off line boot defrag in anything other than the Primary. It's because I did this what caused the problem because the pagefile is only present in the Primary snapshot. <-QUOTE}

My concern is that the program allowed you to do something wrong.
when I first tried out the program I came to the bit where I was asked if I wanted to make a copy of the MBR to a floppie. How many machines still include this type of drive ?anyway I skipped it and of course when I used Acronis to restore I then had to also use Acronis to restore the MBR. A good program would perhaps make it clear that a copy of the MBR was essential ? Similarly I would expect a warning message if trying to defrag in an improper way.

My problem is I just can't get it to work period. "unable to create static copy of active snapshot"

[Rilla927]

{QUOTE-> My concern is that the program allowed you to do something wrong. <-QUOTE} It's not the programs fault. It's human error. When I ran Perfect Disk it was only going to do it's job, but it couldn't have known that there was no pagefile on that snapshot before I attempted to run it. It wasn't a big deal cuz all I had to do was reinstall, but it was something I learned that shouldn't be done in the way that I did it.

{QUOTE-> when I first tried out the program I came to the bit where I was asked if I wanted to make a copy of the MBR to a floppie. How many machines still include this type of drive ?anyway I skipped it and of course when I used Acronis to restore I then had to also use Acronis to restore the MBR. A good program would perhaps make it clear that a copy of the MBR was essential ? <-QUOTE} If FD asked you about making a copy of the MBR then it was essentially telling you it was needed. If you don't have a floppy drive you could always use a external one. Unfortunately, you are right a lot of computers don't come with one, especially laptops. I made sure when I ordered my desktop it had a floppy drive.

{QUOTE-> My problem is I just can't get it to work period. "unable to create static copy of active snapshot" <-QUOTE} I'm sure with all the experienced users here something will be figured out.

I replied to your other post about FD.

[Horus37]

I'll be uninstalling the program and compare a virgin MBR to what is left over after a complete uninstall. Also perhaps comodo fw or Avast AV have something to do with it as I don't know if either one of those 2 programs get into the MBR or lock my ability to rewrite the MBR.

One other thing people have brought up is defragging. I've been defragging from the 3rd snapshot NOT the original first host system snapshot and also only using the xphome defragger. So far no problems. However do you see that as a problem and why? I guess you are suggesting only defragging from the orignal 1st snapshot because? I'm hoping the xphome defragger isn't smart enough to rearrange the programs based on how much I used them across all the snapshots. That would be a disaster. I notice in the ADD/REMOVE section of xp it keeps track of how often programs are used so is that how the defragger keeps track of how often you use a program and perhaps rearranges programs based on that? I guess I must have dodged a bullet again on that. However I even did a DOS defrag from the 3rd partition and no problems. How dangerous is that?

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> I'll be uninstalling the program and compare a virgin MBR to what is left over after a complete uninstall. Also perhaps comodo fw or Avast AV have something to do with it as I don't know if either one of those 2 programs get into the MBR or lock my ability to rewrite the MBR.

One other thing people have brought up is defragging. I've been defragging from the 3rd snapshot NOT the original first host system snapshot and also only using the xphome defragger. So far no problems. However do you see that as a problem and why? I guess you are suggesting only defragging from the orignal 1st snapshot because? I'm hoping the xphome defragger isn't smart enough to rearrange the programs based on how much I used them across all the snapshots. That would be a disaster. I notice in the ADD/REMOVE section of xp it keeps track of how often programs are used so is that how the defragger keeps track of how often you use a program and perhaps rearranges programs based on that? I guess I must have dodged a bullet again on that. However I even did a DOS defrag from the 3rd partition and no problems. How dangerous is that? <-QUOTE}

Horus

I can only speak for perfect disk. When it defrags it knows about First Defense, and so protects the one file that it is preferable not to move. Other than that it treats the disk as a bunch of files, and defrags everything in all snapshots. I don't know as there is a reason not to defrag in any given snapshot, I just think it avoids problems to do it in the primary, especially the offline boot defrag.

Pete

[Horus37]

{QUOTE-> Horus

I can only speak for perfect disk. When it defrags it knows about First Defense, and so protects the one file that it is preferable not to move. Other than that it treats the disk as a bunch of files, and defrags everything in all snapshots. I don't know as there is a reason not to defrag in any given snapshot, I just think it avoids problems to do it in the primary, especially the offline boot defrag.

Pete <-QUOTE}


Well I've done defrags in the 3rd snapshot and can tell you it places certain folders way out on the disk but when you defrag from the primary snapshot it gets compacted better and no files places on the outter area of the hdd but so far it didn't create an unbootable problem. I even did a dos defrag from both the 1st and 3rd snapshots and no problems all with xp home defragger. However I may have been just lucky. I now see that I agree it's probably better though to do it from the primary snapshot. Visually when you do this you see in the defragger picture that files are way out on the ouside rim of the hdd with the 3rd snapshot defrag. That could mean problems later?

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> Well I've done defrags in the 3rd snapshot and can tell you it places certain folders way out on the disk but when you defrag from the primary snapshot it gets compacted better and no files places on the outter area of the hdd but so far it didn't create an unbootable problem. I even did a dos defrag from both the 1st and 3rd snapshots and no problems all with xp home defragger. However I may have been just lucky. I now see that I agree it's probably better though to do it from the primary snapshot. Visually when you do this you see in the defragger picture that files are way out on the ouside rim of the hdd with the 3rd snapshot defrag. That could mean problems later? <-QUOTE}

I use Perfect Disk, and I just let it do smart placement and let it go at that.

Pete