MBR Mayhem

I have 3 harddrives, one 40GB(C, another 80(D, and another one 160GB(E, one partition on each. My OS is installed on my 40GB HDD. A few months ago I kept getting delayed write failed errors whenever I wrote many small files at once on D:, so I converted it to Dynamic Disk. I stopped getting the errors.

Whenever I try to install an operating system by booting from CD it says it can't install it on any of the drives. Windows XP SP2 Setup could not recognize any of my partitions. I then used the RETAIN command for my D: drive and now Windows accepts installation on D:, but it still can't recognize the partitions on my other 2 basic disks.

Upon using the Recovery Console I tried using FIXMBR, but it warned me that my MBR is non-standard or invalid and that I risk not being able to read data off it if I proceeded. Also, it could only fix the MBR on the drive on which my OS is installed, and so I could not do anything about E:.

Still, windows runs just fine on it, but I would be unable to install it over the existing one without a format. And also, my other harddrive, E:, which contains no operating system, is giving me the same error upon install even though it's a basic disk.

Microsoft's support applied only to dynamic drives, so I figured that maybe that drive was conflicting with something and took the dynamic HDD out of my computer. But the problem persisted just like before.

I have Norton GoBack installed on my system HDD(C. But I chose NOT to install it on my other HDDs. It placed a 3.6GB history file on the install drive, but upon upgrade from 4.00 to 4.02 it also placed one on my other basic disk, which was about 2.3MB in size and didn't record any history as the system wasn't using it. So I deleted that file. I don't know if this might have anything to do with it. Also, I've uninstalled Norton GoBack a number of times forcefully using Symantec's removal tool.

Another thing I did with my 3rd harddrive this time, was that I installed Windows Vista on it. At the next reboot it stopped functioning and displayed a black screen, but instead of fixing it I just shifted the boot device from BIOS from E: back to C:, where my OS is installed and then deleted Vista's files. Deletion of Vista's files also included the deletion of a file called "bootmgr", which seems to be just as vital as "ntldr" is for XP.

My question is if anyone has any solution to my problem. Also I would like to know of any utilities that could diagnose my MBRs and fix them without me risking to damage my partition tables and be unable to read anything off one or more of my HDDs.

 

What is the specific problem you are trying to solve?

Are you using WinXP on the C: drive and is that working OK and accessing all drives?

Is your aim to set up a system with multiple operating systems?

WinXP setup will not allow you to completely install to a hard drive other than HD0 (Primary Master).

Try this program which you can use on 30 day trial:

http://majorgeeks.com/BootIt_Next_Generation_d646.html

The download includes a manual telling you how to use it to set up multiple operating systems. There is also a lot of useful stuff on their website http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/index.html including fixing MBR problems.

 

Wow, that's quite complicated especially with Vista in the mix whose bootloader is different from the normal boot.ini. If you want to work with BCDEDIT to work with the Vista bootloader then try this guide. Good luck.