Hi,

this seems to be the place to post this question but am happy to post
to another group if there is a better one for the question.

Situation:

I was about to reinstall W2K on my laptop but before doing so I was
going to copy some files first across the network.

As I think my HD might be getting a little mischievous, I was thinking
about setting some significant bits of the drive to zeros so that an
install might be that much fresher. So I used some a HD utility to
zero out the MBR.

Oops. I forgot to copy the files I wanted to save over the network
first.

Used some unnamed utility to create a new MBR. Didn't work of course.

So, now what I'd like to do is the following simple workflow:

1. boot some ntfs-recognizing OS or other from a CD or floppy

2. use some utility that will scan the HD even without the MBR (or
recreate a valid MBR such that the HD is once again bootable?) and get
a list of files which I can then choose from and copy across the
network. A poor second choice would be to copy the files to a floppy
on the laptop rather than having network accessibility.

I've discovered lots of utilties available on the web but nothing that
runs command line from a simple boot from a floppy or CD.

Any auggestions for facilitating this workflow would be much
appreciated. Please cc replies to

paddlin<underscore>jones [at] yahoo [dott] com