Master boot record read error!

[felixc]

Hi,
I got that nice panic message this afternoon after powering up my PC. Then "press any key to reboot".
I use BootMagic8, with Win98 and Win2K and some other partitions.
Tried the Rescue Bootmagic floppy, it gets to the same error message.
Has anyone experienced this?
After changing the BIOS boot sequence, the PC managed to boot to Win2K, without going through Bootmagic.
From a Win98 boot floppy I can see the drive contents (except the inactive partition).
Now I pray for the 110V to stay stable while I backup everything for the next few hours, as my PC may just never reboot again. A Virus scan showed nothing.
It looks like I'll need a new hard disk eh? But before I do it, does anyone know of a utility that can test and maybe repair the MBR contents?
Felixc

 

[edfair]

fdisk /mbr rewrites the mbr. Then you'll need the bootmagic EBD to reset it to use bootmagic again.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[felixc]

Will it destroy the partition table?

 

[edfair]

No

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.