12-30-2011, 09:35 PM
I'm going to explain how you're able to fix your boot sector if you're having issues with your master boot record if it's invalid or corrupt. The method explained in this post is shown through a system repair disk which is available for download on Windows 7 through your computer directly. You can burn it to a disk, which is what I would recommend. But lets move on.
First, you'll want to know what the MBR is. MBR is short for Master Boot Record, and it contains data about your partitions, including bootable systems. So if you dual boot with Linux and Windows, the MBR is what stores that information for you, and it's the boot sector located on the first sector of your hard drive.
If this becomes invalid, it can cause quite a few issues that may even possibly render your computer unbootable until it's fixed.
So the first step is to boot the repair disk, through the boot menu, or by selecting your CD drive as the first to boot on priority. Once you've loaded the disk on boot, you'll have to select your language and all that, and it will search for Windows installs. After this, you'll come to a menu, where you have the option to open an instance of a command prompt. This is the one you'll want to click.
In here, we want to navigate to the boot directory, and since by default you should already be in System32 from what I can remember about doing this, you'll have to type in this command to get into the boot directory from there:
Now that we're in the Boot directory of Windows, there's a file in here called bootsect.
Depending on what Windows version you have will change the syntax of this command slightly as one of the parameters you'll have to specify will change:
If you run Windows NT versions of 5.2 or below (which is anything before Vista), this is the command you'll want to run:
If you run Windows NT versions of 6.0 or higher, you'll want to run
This will restore the master boot record. If this fails, there's also a utility called bootrec which can be used in the following way, although i've never had to use it before:
Finally, use the "exit" command to close the console and reboot your Windows.
First, you'll want to know what the MBR is. MBR is short for Master Boot Record, and it contains data about your partitions, including bootable systems. So if you dual boot with Linux and Windows, the MBR is what stores that information for you, and it's the boot sector located on the first sector of your hard drive.
If this becomes invalid, it can cause quite a few issues that may even possibly render your computer unbootable until it's fixed.
So the first step is to boot the repair disk, through the boot menu, or by selecting your CD drive as the first to boot on priority. Once you've loaded the disk on boot, you'll have to select your language and all that, and it will search for Windows installs. After this, you'll come to a menu, where you have the option to open an instance of a command prompt. This is the one you'll want to click.
In here, we want to navigate to the boot directory, and since by default you should already be in System32 from what I can remember about doing this, you'll have to type in this command to get into the boot directory from there:
Code:
cd BootNow that we're in the Boot directory of Windows, there's a file in here called bootsect.
Depending on what Windows version you have will change the syntax of this command slightly as one of the parameters you'll have to specify will change:
If you run Windows NT versions of 5.2 or below (which is anything before Vista), this is the command you'll want to run:
Code:
bootsect /nt52 SYS /mbrIf you run Windows NT versions of 6.0 or higher, you'll want to run
Code:
bootsect /nt60 SYS /mbrThis will restore the master boot record. If this fails, there's also a utility called bootrec which can be used in the following way, although i've never had to use it before:
Code:
bootrec /fixmbrFinally, use the "exit" command to close the console and reboot your Windows.