Repairing Master Boot Record if No Prior ADD Installation

I am posting this question in advance of purchasing Acronis Disk Director Suite.

We are experiencing a Disk Read Error on a Dell Dimension computer, and as a consequence, cannot boot the system. We are prompted to press "Ctrl, Alt, Del" which simply brings us back around to the Disk Read Error.

The system is a 1.8 GHz Pentium IV, 128 MB RAM, running WinXP Home (SP2). The hard drive is a Maxtor 40 GB.

My questions:

1. Can ADDS's Disk Editor utility correct this problem?
2. If so, can it do so on a computer where the software was not previously installed?
3. What preparation steps should I do in order to fix this problem? (creating bootable disks, etc.)

Thank you.

Adam...

 

Hello Adam,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis Disk Management Software.

Could you please do the following?

- Download Acronis Report utility from http://www.acronis.com/files/support/AcronisReport.exe;
- Run Acronis Report utility and select the "Create bootable floppy" option;
- Insert a blank floppy disk in the floppy drive and proceed with creating the bootable diskette;
- Boot the computer under consideration from this diskette and wait for report creation process to complete;
- Send us the report.txt file from the floppy disk.

This would provide us with detailed information on the hard disk partition structure.

Please collect the information requested above and contact us from our web-site: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/my/support/ . Please don't forget to send the link to this thread along with gathered information. This would allow us to investigate the problem and help you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Semyonov Vasily

 

Why couldn't you run fdisk with a switch of /mtbr ?

I would have to check the switch /mtbr may be close but wrong. With fdisk you can refomat the boot sector and not bother data at all, this has fixed many boot problems for me. Just do a fdisk /help to find the correct context to reformat the boot record.

I am not sure fdisk is on XP, I know I have done this with success, but it been a couple years and thousands of problems ago. It would be on 98, NT or 2000 and might be under winnt directory in XP.

Be careful with fdisk as you can wipe out your complete disk very quickly.