Tools to repair Master Boot Record

None of the associations pulled up in similar threads seemed to say much but I'm sure this is not a new question.

I have some flaky drives (both on the same machine but one for cloning.)

I have used the Windows XP setup cd Repair/Control Console/fixmbr command and that kept the machine on but the drive failed to boot next time.

Once I was able to get into Safe Mode and used Restore to a previous configuration and that worked only until next boot up as well.

All this seems involved with not getting good boot instructions since a backup routine I did was interrupted.

I have Hirens but those prog.s sometimes have a big appetite and you wind up with a worse drive than you started with.

Finally I looked at the instructions for Seatools for these 160Gb Seagate drives and loaded it once. I thought repair mbr was on that pdf but it only made one ref to MBR in the introduction that I could find.

What have I missed? Are there new programs for this with bullet proof MBR?

 

Hi,

The only thing that signals a bad MBR to me is a blinking cursor at the top left of the screen. Your symptoms seem more related to a failing HD.

What is the message you see when the HD does not boot? Is there any message?

 

Thanks for answering. It could well be old disk probs but I've run some of those health progs and they show up ok. I'll take a fresh suggestion on that though for a different disk health prog. if you have one..

This problem first showed XP trying to load and getting stalled at the "welcome" screen where the word welcome appears on the screen.

Alternatively most recent was fail to load from the POST where it says press a key to load from cd. As I recall the HD was recognized.

I am using the IOBit Defrag 2 program recommended by Major Geeks.

 

Run a chkdsk /r on the C: drive to rule out filesystem problems. Usually stalling while Windows has started to load is due to a corrupted or hard to read file. If Windows gets far enough to stall your MBR is fine.

You can start chkdsk by right-clicking the C: drive in My Computer and choosing Properties. Then under the Tools menu select Check Now. In the window that opens tick both boxes and hit Start. It will schedule for next boot. Reboot and let it run.
That will rule out a problem with the file system.

As far as diagnostic program if Seatools says the drive is OK when running both the short and long tests then it should be OK.

 

Yes, I have to run chkdsk usually to get the clone program Ghost to copy my backup. This may be signs and warnings of a disk failure. I've been looking at ebay for some replacements in larger sizes but finds are pretty scarce in the range I would want to buy.