"Error loading operating system".. I think I damaged my disk's MBR

[Battousai001]

Hi! I would like to ask for some assistance, I think I have damaged my disk' MBR. This is what happened: I tried inserting an windows xp OEM installer on my laptop just to check if there will be a "reformat" option for OEM installers. It seems that the OEM installers automatically format and erases the current MBR, after a few seconds it said that it cannot proceed with the format operation because "something's wrong with the disk" but then it already erased the MBR.

I have no intention of reinstalling or reformatting the disk and I have valuable data on my drive, I tried to fix this by using my original winxp installer and tried recovery console's FIXMBR but still the error "Error loading operating system" appears.

Is there any other way I can fix this or at least be able to recover the files? Thanks for any replies!

 

[Bozo Galora]

Well, I would know exactly what to do if it were a homebuilt PC. But this is an OEM with probably the hidden partition factor, laptops being even worse.

<Just out of curiosity, since these are the most frequent type of help questions on AT, I often wonder why if someone buys an OEM with some kind of warranty, that when something goes wrong, why wouldnt a call to the manuf be your first option? Tell them that you inserted the redo Cd and didnt know it would start automatically, and what should i do now?>

The next item is that your post is lacking info. WHAT laptop do you have? What OEM XP installer disk, are you talking about. One that came with your your laptop, or the kind you buy in a store, or one that came with another PC?

FWIW, I would assume you sarted to erase the system data on the O/S partition, but the MBR is not changed unless the partitions/size are altered during setup install options.
There is always a copy of the MBR which is what recovery sw accesses. It is never erased, just overwritten. You can erase it manually however, if corrupted or infected.
There are lots of MBR restore sw's, but I dont see that as your prob, with the limited info.

 

[Bozo Galora]

Quote:
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/
Troubleshooting the Restore Process
The Dell-specific Ctrl+F11 process is supposed to completely automate the restoration process, returning the hard disk to the state it was in when Dell shipped the computer. However, overwriting the MBR by using a boot manager, using the commands "fixmbr" or "fdisk /mbr", installing from a Windows installation CD, and assorted other tasks a user might do will inadvertantly break Ctrl+F11, rendering the system unable to boot the DSR partition. Furthermore, changing the partitioning by adding, deleting, or resizing partitions will cause DSRcheck to fail, so even if Ctrl+F11 works, the restore process will abort without attempting to restore the Ghost image.

This section explains how to fix the Ctrl+F11 and DSR process following repartitioning or OS reinstallation.
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/fixes.htm

Saving your data is no prob, just slaving it to another working HDD, using GetDataBack 3.69 in worst case scenario

 

[Battousai001]

Originally posted by: Bozo Galora
Well, I would know exactly what to do if it were a homebuilt PC. But this is an OEM with probably the hidden partition factor, laptops being even worse.

<Just out of curiosity, since these are the most frequent type of help questions on AT, I often wonder why if someone buys an OEM with some kind of warranty, that when something goes wrong, why wouldnt a call to the manuf be your first option? Tell them that you inserted the redo Cd and didnt know it would start automatically, and what should i do now?>

The next item is that your post is lacking info. WHAT laptop do you have? What OEM XP installer disk, are you talking about. One that came with your your laptop, or the kind you buy in a store, or one that came with another PC?

FWIW, I would assume you sarted to erase the system data on the O/S partition, but the MBR is not changed unless the partitions/size are altered during setup install options.
There is always a copy of the MBR which is what recovery sw accesses. It is never erased, just overwritten. You can erase it manually however, if corrupted or infected.
There are lots of MBR restore sw's, but I dont see that as your prob, with the limited info.

Hi Bozo Galora, thanks for the reply, actually the laptop that was affected has no warranty anymore, the laptop where the OEM disk came from also has no warranty. The manufacturer of the OEM laptop informed me that they can only do a "reinstall" or "reformat" and no backup or data restoration service.

I was only checking if the OEM winxp installer really does wipes the disk because originally the OEM laptop's OS got corrupted and there are valuable data in it that I need to get but the OEM installer seemed to have wiped the mbr automatically, (unfortunately I learned this the hard way by testing the disk on my other laptop that also has important data in it.)

I tried googling "error loading os" and saw the "FIXMBR" article so I tried it without any luck. The laptop where the OEM installer came has "Windows XP Media Center" license sticker, the other laptop has Windows XP Professional (non OEM) installed.

The OEM laptop manufacturer is NEO core2duo, the affected laptop is Compaq EVO N110 which is older than XP.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Bozo Galora
Saving your data is no prob, just slaving it to another working HDD, using GetDataBack 3.69 in worst case scenario.

Yeah, I suggest no doing anything else that might write to that hard drive. Set it up as a secondary drive and use data recovery software to copy the data somewhere else.

For the future, you might want to take a look at the many data backup options available these days.

 

[Bozo Galora]

You seem to be fixated on "the disk apparently wiped the mbr automatically"
I mentioned formatting does nothing to the mbr, and in fact does not erase anything, just puts an "x" in front of data addresses, flagging the system that there is nothing written there, but there is. The only time your HDD is "clean" is when you buy it. After that, the only way you "erase" anything is when you overwrite it at its address on the HDD file system with something else. Or use a zero fill utility that truly eliminates data - but not the file system.

If you wish, you can download this little utility "mbrtool" (only 79Kb) and throw it on a win98 startup floppy, boot to it, type mbrtool.exe (enter), and check number 4 to restore MBR, which will bring back the copy of MBR on HDD
http://www.softpedia.com/progD...ol-Download-50892.html
But like I said, this is not your problem
A laptop HDD is NOT a normal everyday piece of hardware. It is a carefully configured piece of mass production to allow people who know nothing about computers to redo mistakes by themselves without hours of discussion on the phone. You cannot bring enthusiast home builder techniques to this party unless you really know whats involved.

There is also a well known bootable recovery disk called Hirens bootcd (9.8) that has quite a few recovery/mbr/partition tools, which can be obtained by googling it.
http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

However, you are now in data recovery mode, not fixing mode.