Repairing MBR

[drevin]

Hi,

Let's say one of my disks has a corrupted master boot record (MBR). If I zero fill, format and partition that drive, does that procedure also recreate the MBR, or does modifying it require some kind of specific method?

 

[Hawkeye22]

You didn't list your OS.

WinXP and Vista:
http://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/fix-mbr-xp-vista/

Win7:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4836283_repair-mbr-windows.html

 

[drevin]

It's XP 32bit. I already did the procedure in my first post earlier, and would like to know whether or not it did any changes to the MBR.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Yes, your procedure would have created a new MBR. You could have just deleted all partitions on the drive and recreated the partitions and it would have done it. Of course, this destroys all data on the drive just like your procedure did.

The fixes I listed in my previous post do not destroy the data, only repair the MBR.

 

[drevin]

Thanks. So if I got this right, I don't need to do the fixmbr at this point as I already deleted the partitions and created new ones?

The old MBR might have been fine, I just used to have a rootkit located on the MBR and even though I was able to remove the rootkit, wanted to recreate the MBR to make sure it's ok.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Thanks. So if I got this right, I don't need to do the fixmbr at this point as I already deleted the partitions and created new ones?

Correct.

 

[drevin]

Best answer selected by drevin.