I am still dead on my corporate system, and the XP boot CD I brought won't boot. And so far I have not found anyone here at the IETF meeting that happens to have one in their bag of tricks...
So I found instructions on doing this in Ubuntu:
http://www.arsgeek.com/2008/01/15/how-to-fix-your-windows-mbr-with-an-ubuntu...
I have my Centos install CD 1 of 6 that gets me into rescue. Is it able to fix my mbr?
Problem I have with the above instructions (of course I have not tried them as I would have to burn the Ubuntu live CD), is I cannot write anything to the harddrive to store a program to fix the drive (at least that is my reading of the instructions). I suppose I can put a USB drive on the system to hold any temp thing?
Robert Moskowitz wrote on Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:29:01 +0100:
I am still dead on my corporate system, and the XP boot CD I brought won't boot. And so far I have not found anyone here at the IETF meeting that happens to have one in their bag of tricks...
If this is an XP system and the MBR set by XP, then you can boot with the (any!) XP CD/DVD into the rescue console and use fixmbr command. However, you indicated earlier there is some encryption in place, I don't know if that is already in effect at MBR level. If it is, this method or the one mentioned in the article won't help.
Kai
Kai Schaetzl wrote:
Robert Moskowitz wrote on Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:29:01 +0100:
I am still dead on my corporate system, and the XP boot CD I brought won't boot. And so far I have not found anyone here at the IETF meeting that happens to have one in their bag of tricks...
If this is an XP system and the MBR set by XP, then you can boot with the (any!) XP CD/DVD into the rescue console and use fixmbr command.
I know that, but so far I have not found anyone here at the IETF meeting that has one. I mean, who carries such a CD with them to a week-long meeting? I have a couple of options to pursue still. LIke the network helpdesk vendor who is local...
However, you indicated earlier there is some encryption in place, I don't know if that is already in effect at MBR level. If it is, this method or the one mentioned in the article won't help.
My corporate tech guy told me the first step is to get a standard XP mbr back on the system, and then he believes he can talk me through getting the encryption working again.
Kai
Rainer Duffner wrote:
Robert Moskowitz schrieb:
My corporate tech guy told me the first step is to get a standard XP mbr back on the system, and then he believes he can talk me through getting the encryption working again.
If you really have SafeBoot, I have my doubts about that.
Got to try, got to try......
Robert Moskowitz wrote on Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:51:49 +0100:
I mean, who carries such a CD with them to a week-long meeting?
Well, I used to take my setup CD with me for a while when I took the laptop with me. It should even suffice if you can get a time-bombed demo CD. It can also be Win2k or Vista I think.
Kai
Robert Moskowitz wrote:
I am still dead on my corporate system, and the XP boot CD I brought won't boot. And so far I have not found anyone here at the IETF meeting that happens to have one in their bag of tricks...
If this is an XP system and the MBR set by XP, then you can boot with the (any!) XP CD/DVD into the rescue console and use fixmbr command.
I know that, but so far I have not found anyone here at the IETF meeting that has one. I mean, who carries such a CD with them to a week-long meeting? I have a couple of options to pursue still. LIke the network helpdesk vendor who is local...
However, you indicated earlier there is some encryption in place, I don't know if that is already in effect at MBR level. If it is, this method or the one mentioned in the article won't help.
My corporate tech guy told me the first step is to get a standard XP mbr back on the system, and then he believes he can talk me through getting the encryption working again.
Did your centos install work? Normally dual-boot systems bring up windows with grub in the mbr and a chainloader entry to load windows. Even if you are usb-booting centos, you should be able to set it up to chainload the boot to the windows partition on the hard disk as an alternate grub entry. I'm not sure how this will mesh with disk encryption, though, but if a standard windows mbr would work, this might.
Robert Moskowitz wrote:
Kai Schaetzl wrote:
Robert Moskowitz wrote on Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:29:01 +0100:
I am still dead on my corporate system, and the XP boot CD I brought won't boot. And so far I have not found anyone here at the IETF meeting that happens to have one in their bag of tricks...
If this is an XP system and the MBR set by XP, then you can boot with the (any!) XP CD/DVD into the rescue console and use fixmbr command.
I know that, but so far I have not found anyone here at the IETF meeting that has one. I mean, who carries such a CD with them to a week-long meeting? I have a couple of options to pursue still. LIke the network helpdesk vendor who is local...
However, you indicated earlier there is some encryption in place, I don't know if that is already in effect at MBR level. If it is, this method or the one mentioned in the article won't help.
My corporate tech guy told me the first step is to get a standard XP mbr back on the system, and then he believes he can talk me through getting the encryption working again.
Kai
Freedos with command "fdisk /mbr" ?
There are a couple of hurdles with this, mainly:
1) If you have SATA drive (or SCSI or...), freedos may not be able to see the drive
2) I don't know if freedos has an updated version of fdisk that has no addressing limitation (main not be a showstopper anyway)
Anyway, just a quick tought.
Guy Boisvert, ing. IngTegration inc.
on 7-30-2008 12:29 AM Robert Moskowitz spake the following:
I am still dead on my corporate system, and the XP boot CD I brought won't boot. And so far I have not found anyone here at the IETF meeting that happens to have one in their bag of tricks...
So I found instructions on doing this in Ubuntu:
http://www.arsgeek.com/2008/01/15/how-to-fix-your-windows-mbr-with-an-ubuntu...
I have my Centos install CD 1 of 6 that gets me into rescue. Is it able to fix my mbr?
Problem I have with the above instructions (of course I have not tried them as I would have to burn the Ubuntu live CD), is I cannot write anything to the harddrive to store a program to fix the drive (at least that is my reading of the instructions). I suppose I can put a USB drive on the system to hold any temp thing?
I am wondering if any standard Microsoft boot sector might work. I could probably e-mail you a CD image of a dos 7.1 bootdisk if "fdisk /mbr" would work. I have never tried it, and maybe I'll quickly fire up a VM image of XP and try it.
Scott Silva wrote on Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:49:42 -0700:
I am wondering if any standard Microsoft boot sector might work. I could probably e-mail you a CD image of a dos 7.1 bootdisk if "fdisk /mbr" would work. I have never tried it, and maybe I'll quickly fire up a VM image of XP and try it.
This won't work as it doesn't know what to load next. In case this info helps Robert: You need the XP (or NT) MBR plus the following files in the root of the boot disk: boot.ini, NTDETECT.COM, ntldr These are in the root of any XP file system and can just be copied. boot.ini contains which harddisk partition to boot and may need editing according to the partition structure on the disk. This will then load from any bootable disk (floppy, USB, harddisk) and subsequently load the OS on that partition. On a non-encrypted filesystem. You can make a bootable diskette (with that MBR) from within XP by formatting the diskette and checking the option to make it a system disk. However, I doubt this will work for USB sticks etc.
Kai
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Guy Boisvert -
Kai Schaetzl -
Les Mikesell -
Rainer Duffner -
Robert Moskowitz -
Scott Silva