[tlug] [Becoming OT] Re: problem with MBR

[Jon Povey <jon@example.com>]

On 04/06/2010 14:18, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Jon Povey writes:
>   >  An old, old trick, may not help so much these days, but:
>   >
>   >  - boot from a DOS floppy (!)
>   >  ->  fdisk /mbr
>
> I don't think you want to do that with a post-XP Windows system,
> though.  You need to keep a copy of the Windows MBR.
I don't know about post-XP.. but on XP, 2K, NT4 it is a useful trick to 
fix Windows when it gets confused about drive letters. I've done 
unfortunate things before like booting with a broken machine's system 
disk plugged in (to rescue it) and having Windows decide to permanently 
rename MY system disk to something wacky like F:, persisting after the 
other drive was removed, and causing much breakage.
fdisk /mbr cured it. I assume it wiped out a GUID written to the MBR to 
identify the drive.. or somesuch.
--
Jon