Got a fun one. Editing a Windows 98 SE MBR on a VHD.

[Carnaxus]

...Is it possible? I have an old Toshiba Tecra 8000 that suddenly decided it was done booting, but I was able to pull every single last file off onto my Win10 Pro computer without any issues. I made a VHD (.vhd specifically, not .vhdx) and mounted it, copied all the files over, unmounted it, and attached it to a VM in Hyper-V. Unfortunately, the MBR seems to have not copied over (or perhaps it corrupted in the first place and led to the Tecra not booting). Does anyone here know if it's possible to manually add or edit an MBR on a VHD?

Edit:

No one has any ideas?

Edit 2:

Aww...

 

[Darkbreeze]

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dn858566.aspx

 

[Carnaxus]

That's handy, except that I'm trying to load it via Hyper-V, not as a dual boot. Windows 98SE wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to do with my FX-8370 and 32GB of DDR3 RAM.

Edit:

Upon reading a little farther down the page, it looks like that's geared more towards a fresh install, not a more-or-less cloning of an existing drive.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Investigating a better answer on this with my cronies.

 

[Carnaxus]

Ok. Here's the full details:

Set up the VM with the VHD I made by simply using Win10's copy/paste to move the files off the old HDD and onto the VHD. Told it to boot and it gave me the classic "Non-system disk or disk error" message. I figured that's probably because Win10 didn't copy the MBR from the HDD to the VHD, and am wondering if it's possible to manually write one or copy the old one over.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, so far no answers back, but that will probably change tomorrow. For now, a few links you might want to look at.

This explains just about everything you could want to factually know about the Windows 98SE MBR:

http://thestarman.narod.ru/asm/mbr/95BMEMBR.htm

and based on the information on that page, if the guy is still around I imagine you could probably email him with any specific questions as he seem to be somewhat of an authority on the MBR for that specific OS, which I am definitely not.


IIRC, if you start from a boot disk if you run the option fdisk /mbr it recreates the master
boot record..so I'd think you could probably run any bootable repair disk for Windows 98SE, using only an extra blank drive or something attached to the primary storage header. Just temporarily, until the MBR is created. Then copy that MBR partition that is created on the system you intend to run the save VHD with onto the same drive as that you copy the saved files from the VHD to, or even into the VHD as a separate partition on that drive, and that MIGHT possibly work. I've repaired MBRs in a somewhat similar fashion before. Little different but not totally.

https://itstillworks.com/repair-master-boot-record-mbr-5137915.html

 

[Carnaxus]

The Starman did in fact respond, and between us we may have found a solution. I haven't been able to find a PS/2 keyboard or mouse, so I haven't been able to test it yet. If it does work I'll detail it here for future reference.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well that's cool man. Glad you were able to get in touch with him. Apparently we are somewhat lacking in 98SE experts around here these days, but in all fairness it's been a LONG time since that was relevant to most people so I can't really blame them. Hopefully he is able to help you get that sorted out. Good luck.