MBR, Hardware, Software, Firmware or Possible VIRUS

Hi all,

Ok, this is nuts ~ wait, maybe I am NUTS! Here goes:

1) Was having problems that couldn't seem to get fixed, even here.
2) Took it to supposed professional geeks -- they screwed it up worse than I could have! And I paid good money for them to do it.
3) Original problem was with the Master Boot Record error on startup that Recovery from Windows XP was not dealing with.
4) Guess what, just got the Master Boot Record error again! AND, just like last time, I was able to get past it. But it eventually rendered me immobile, sooooo before that happens again, I want to get to the bottom of it.
5) I lost all my data before, but I have been adding back in from an old computer. (I miss Windows 98 SE simply for the DOS commands). If I could use an fdisk MBR command I think I would not be having these issues!
6) I'm really suspicious that there is a virus that has attacked the firmware or maybe just the master boot record -- but wouldn't Norton detect that? It's up to date.

Bewildered and bumfuzzled and a million other adjectives, but mostly TIRED,
thanks in advance for all your help and patience. I've tried to list what is necessary, BUT as I stated I am tuckered out!

Thanks,
Cherie

 

Oops, told ya I was tired. I forgot to mention yet another very odd thing my 'puter is doing now that it wasn't doing before. It won't let me click on something. It will flash but not long enough for me to do anything about it! I have to use the keyboard to even let me get to my Start Menu -- once I've done that, it'll ususally correct itself. I'm also having a hard time moving bars with the mouse (you know field widths -- expanding the length of a field with the mouse), so that you can see more of a field.....grrrrrr! Just tidbits of additional "weird" information.

Thanks again and g'night all!

Cherie

 

also try *also in dos mode* fdisk d:\ /mbr

should rebuild the master boot record on that drive...

I have copied this from the next post down that 'wizard' had replied , so i assume if you put the correct drive letter in (where the d: is at the moment) this will create a new mbr on that drive.. but there again 'wizard' will correct me if I'm wrong

 

Hey thanks Toke for trying!

I tried to explain (obviously not very well) before that my system doesn't recognize the fdisk command. I thought it was because I was running Windows XP home o/s. It says, " 'fdisk' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file"

I even tried executing it from the root of the C drive, from the windows directory, from the windows\system directory, from the windows\system32 directory.

Soooo, still bewildered and bumfuzzled,

Cherie

 

Ok just a thought , have you got a 'Win ME' boot disk and go into fdisk from there and would that command work from there ??? as i said just a thought ...

 

Hey Toke,

Thanks again for responding ~ I DO appreciate your patience! Nope, don't have a Windows ME boot disk, and even if I could get my hands on one, would it be cool to use with the Windows XP home o/s? Definitely ignorant when it comes to that jazz.

 

Hi Ra|n! I so appreciate your help. I "tried" to follow your instructions. However, I don't have a Windows XP cd, it's "supposedly" on my hard drive - which what good is that if you're having problems, right? Thanks a lot Compaq.

Anyway, THIS time I have been able to get to the recovery console ok, so I just tried your suggestion from there instead of recopying. I did realize that I may be fixing garbage with garbage however. Anyhow, thought it was worth a shot. So it first asked me what version of Windows I wanted, so I chose the I386, was that correct? It was on my D drive (partition) and so it switched to that as the root and directory. I then typed fixmbr and it went off with the following major warning:

** CAUTION **

This computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot record.

FIXMBR may damage your partition tables if you proceed. This could cause all the partitions on the current hard disk to become inaccessible.

If you are not having problems accessing your drive, do not continue.

Are you sure you want to run FIXMBR?

Chicken sh*t that I am, of course I responded no. I then tried fixboot (which I don't know whether that will help if I didn't run fixmbr, but I was a little braver at that point!). It responded with the following:

"The new boot sector was successfully written."

So, now my question is -- where from here? I want to fix this before it slams me again. ALSO, was unclear as to how to handle the last suggestion with the CMOS etc. Sorry to be so dense, but I've never done that before. When you have the time, would you please give more explicit instructions on that -- or could you direct me via a link or somepin'???? ALSO, if I've done the above wrong, I'm hopin' you'll let me know???

Thanks again so very, very much!
Cherie