Hi can any one tell me what an M B R error message means on the boo
up screen, i cant get onto my computer, im not very knowlegable o
such matters

M --- Master
B --- Boot
R --- Record.

Depending on the OS & Format your laptop use. You need to fix it using
different tools provided by the OS.

Dewaine

cumfell wrote:

cumfell <no@spam.invalid> wrote:
Which one?

Master Boot Record? Broken? Rewrite it.

What matters? Well, talk to someone who is - start by noting down the
error message exactly and passing it on. In the absence of the message
I can only guess wildly that your BIOS is warning you that a virus or
some human has altered your MBR, possibly for the better, possibly for
the worse ...



Peter

MBR (best typed with no spaces and pronounced "em-bee-are") is the
Master Boot Record. If it can't be read, the hard drive and all data on
it is generally lost. If the data loss is critical, in rare cases, with
special software tools and a lot of work, an experienced technician
might be able to recover some of the data. Or a recovery service might
be able to do it, at a cost of $1,500 to $12,000.


cumfell wrote:

no@spam.invalid (cumfell) wrote:
One thing to check is that there are no floppies or CD-Roms in their
drives, as some boot errors can be caused by machines trying to boot
off non-bootable media...

cumfell wrote:

machine, boot from a Win98 boot diskette or cd, or from any dos
equivalent containing the file fdisk.exe and run "fdisk /mbr". Nothing
will show on the screen but it might have solved your problem. If it
does not, chances are the content of your disk will be lost. Try running
fdisk (without parameters this time) and see if you can recreate partitions.

As a last resort, you could try booting from a linux boot disk and run
linux version of fdisk which is much more tolerant to disk setup errors.

If nothing of this works, either a crash or a virus has caused a damage
that can be best repaired ... by buying a new disk. I hope you keep
updated backups ...

Good luck
--
John Doue

Thanks for the tips all iv tried to start with the recovery disks
mad
I get a screen with 3 options press R for a standard system recover
press F for a full disc format and Q to quit and boot from the har
disk when i press the recovery option is say "starting recovery" the
"hard drive write error" does this mean my hard drive is beyond help

"John Doue" <notwobe@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:Njibf.20$j41.3@read3.inet.fi...
Which is OK if you are running Windows 98 (or Windows 95 or ME using the
appropriate emergency recovery disk).

If you have a Windows NT type operating system, then you need to find the
installation disk, boot into the recovery console and type 'FIXBOOT' to
write a new MBR.