I Have a Seagate Hard drive and I think its boot sector is gone, Im not too sure exactly, but how do I make sure that i do not have a corrupted boot sector on my 80GB HDD. I cannot install Win XP to it as it wont pick it up, but when I have another hard drive with an OS installed I can use the 80GB HDD. Wat is this problem????
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corrupted boot sector???
- Thread starter midsummas
- Start date
What happens when you try to install Widnows XP on it? When you refer to the boot sector being gone, there are two things you have to look at here. One the actual area which is physical and the logical area which isn't written yet. The fact that you say you cannot install Windows XP is puzzling because the boot sector isn't even there until an OS is created on the drive. Have you checked to make sure that in your bios you don't have the anti-virus, boot sector virus option enabled. That would create this type of problem not being able to install an os. This option does not allow anything to be written to the boot sector of a disk.
John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator
John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator
franklin97355
Technical User
try booting to a floppy with fdisk on it and doing "fdisk /mbr" see what happens.
You don't use FDISK with windows xp. Instead you are suppose to boot with the cd in the drive and enter the recover console. Then run the fixmbr command. If this were the actual boot drive, you'd probably have to run the fixboot as well. You should also try running the chkdsk /r command in the recovery console as well. However this all might not work because the first disk is is bootable and windows will look to the first disk for the boot partition first. Since that disk contains the boot sector it will find it and have no problems. It will be tricky to get the second disk fixed this way. You should be able to use the chkdsk command on the second disk, just tell chkdsk which disk you are planning to scan.
John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator
John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator
- Thread starter
- #6
I just disconnected the 30GB HDD and made the 80gb the master with no slaves. i did this before and it still woudlnt install XP. I am only saying it is the boot sector,bcoz when it had XP installed on it it would not start up into windows until I had reset it twice. I know this is not a power issue as i have checked it using that power calculaor site and my rating is below 350 watts and I have a 380 watt PSU installed.
I would try the different options in XP for safe mode.
It may try to start up and quit.
A while back I used the VGA option in safe mode and found it worked. I think sometimes some setup file is needed and has been corrupted. XP has a habit of not working and not telling you much when it doesnt work.
If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.
It may try to start up and quit.
A while back I used the VGA option in safe mode and found it worked. I think sometimes some setup file is needed and has been corrupted. XP has a habit of not working and not telling you much when it doesnt work.
If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.
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- #9
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