Guidance running Recovery Console

[FredRdr88]

I had a bad GRUB load from a Linux drive - it left me unable to boot either Windows or Linux so I managed to burn an install CD for Windows XP and I'm in the Recovery console. When I ran fixmbr it gave me some warnings about partition tables and something unusual. I can now look at the hard-drive and the boot.ini file is fine. I believe I have some utilities that I installed on that drive. I guess I'll try to run one of them and see if the MBR looks funny. I'm sure I have backups of it and I will try to restore it but I just want to know if there is a suggestion how I proceed. Is XP something that can be upgraded easily to SP3? I am running the SP3 upgrade - I might just reinstall but I'm not sure that will solve the problem. I'm not sure what is the best path to take right now. I'll try tosmething.

 

[FredRdr88]

fixmbr says:

** 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 write a new MBR?

I don't what I should do.

 

[FredRdr88]

I have a tool called HDHacker and another called MBRTools I'm hoping I can change the permissions to use them but I cannot get into those directories due to access denied.

 

[FredRdr88]

I have recovered Windows ability to boot by reasoning that since I could see all the directories and files, I would probably be ok to fixmbr.

So I ran fixmbr and all is well now. But I would caution others that something could have moved the partition table - I am lucky.