OS Selector quit selecting

After a weekend of thunderstorms my supposidly turned off thinkpad no longer can select any of the three boots: XP, floppy or Linux. The Disk directer runs, there are no partitions to recover. Any attempt to select one of XP, Linux or Floppy does not do anything. I can move the mouse all day, but the OS selector is hung. I booted my XP SP2 CD, pressed "R" for recovery and entered fixmbr. OK, a reset caused the laptop to boot to windows xp. I then re-activated the OS selector and am back in business. Both linux and XP now boot just fine. I was lucky I had an XP CD available. Normally I dont have it where I work with the laptop.

This should not have happened. The thinkpad was turned off but I had left it in a docking station that was plugged in. Something went wrong that caused this to happen. My question is what can I do to recover from this in the future if I am somewhere and do not have an XP CD.

Also, I would like to add "boot cd" to the os selector. Is that possible?

..thanks..

 

Can`t help you with the "boot to CD". Only way I know to do that is in the BIOS. However, concerning the initial problem, probable power surge. If that was the cause, your very lucky you got off that easy. The only real way to protect a PC during severe storms is unplug it from all external connections. AC, phoneline\DSL\cable, everything. Have done my share of replacing modems, PS`s, etc. after Mother Nature decided she wanted to come calling. No surge suppressor will save you either.

 

Hello BeemerBiker,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Partition and Disk Managing Software.

Please be aware that you can deactivate Acronis OS Selector using the Acronis Disk Director Suite Bootable Rescue CD. This will have the same result as the fimbr command. You can also download the software which will allow you to rewrite the MBR from this forum. You can find the appropriate links for the programs in Acronis Help Post.

If you have any further questions please feel free to ask.

Thank you.
--
Kirill Omelchenko