[KLUG Members] fixing bad mbr on WinXP with linux

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>> > > > A friend has a non-booting WinXP computer.  It says the root partition
>> > > > is unmountable.  He's asking me for a WinXP boot disk, which I can't
>> > > > find laying around anywhere.
>> > > > I do have a Knoppix and a Ubuntu CD.  So he could boot to Linux (yea!)
>> > > > Is there anything he could do with those to restore the master boot
>> > > > record (MBR), which I assume is the problem?  He doesn't know if it's
>> > > > fat32 or NTFS.
>> > > If you can boot from a DOS floppy you used to be able to "fdisk /mbr" to
>> > > regenerate the master boot record.
>> > Hmmmm... I can create a boot disk on a local WinXP machine, but it
>> > doesn't seem to have fdisk...
>> Yep, you have to copy the fdisk command file to the floppy manually.
> The HD doesn't have fdisk.  Is it called something else now?

Bugger.  I just checked an XP box and sure enough there isn't there - I 
haven't
done this in a LONG time, so I guess this tip isn't useful anymore.

The fdisk man page in LINUX doesn't mention the MBR at all.

-- 
Adam Tauno Williams - http://www.whitemice.org