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Repair Windows 7 MBR with Hiren's Boot CD

I would like to repair my Windows 7 MBR using Hiren's Boot CD 15.1.

I want to know the generic method, using this CD, to fix an MBR that is hypothetically "toast".

This hypothetical HD is as follows:

• 100 MB MBR partition
• 60 GB Windows 7 system

Let's imagine there is an empty 100 MB partition and the MBR is corrupt beyond repair or completely not there and my only option is Hiren's Boot CD.

Are GPT partitions less likely to get corrupted than MBR-based partitions?

GPT (GUID Partition Table) partitioning has some benefits over MBR (Master Boot Record), including Support for:

1. More partitions (128)
2. Drives larger than 2 TB

But are there any other benefits like less likelihood of corruption? (The two HD failures I've had were corrupt MBRs). Or are you just playing wack-a-mole where the GPT then gets corrupt in the same way?

MBR equals msdos for gparted?

I want to create a MBR partition table with GParted. In the confirmation window I can choose between various types of partition table. Default is msdos. Is it the same as MBR partition table?

I'm running GParted off Ubuntu LiveCD.

How do I restore my Master Boot Record?

I have installed Autocad 2011 trial on my system and then I found out that Autocad Changes the MBR. (see here) Now I want to restore my MBR to before last time of installing autocad 2011 trial (in fact to original MBR). How can I do that? Please be specific, I'm not a pro hardware technician.

i'm using windows 7 Home.

boot Windows from GRUB rescue

This is my situation:

• installed Ubuntu without a CD (using unetbootin)
• dual boot installation (Windows XP+Ubuntu)
• didn't like the installation and decided to boot into Windows and delete the Linux partitions
• forgot to fix the mbr from within Windows

Now, when I boot, I am stuck in the GRUB rescue limbo.

Simple question: How can I boot into Windows from GRUB rescue?

I cannot boot from CD, therefore the usual solutions (recovery CD etc) do not work. An older question mentions the possibility to boot Windows but doesn't specify details: Ubuntu grub rescue prompt!

Any hints?

How to fix Windows 10 boot loader from Windows

I installed Ubuntu on system that has Windows 10 installed. I can boot to Windows or Ubuntu normally using GRUB. I want to delete Ubuntu partition but first I must restore Windows 10 MBR. Here https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/927392 (applies to Win7 and Vista) they say to use Bootrec.exe with options /FixMbr /FixBoot, but when I type "bootrec.exe /FixMbr" in command prompt Windows say: 'bootrec.exe' is not recognized as an internal or external command. I say I can boot to Win10 and run command prompt from there (don't need to use installation medium ) but don't know what to enter.

What are the differences between MBR vs GPT vs any other partition scheme?

Can anyone tell me what the main differences between i.e. MBR vs GPT or any other partition scheme are? Why would one choose one over the other?

I am not an expert but from new release of Mac OS X which includes a feature called Time Machine, which I find highly useful. GPT is the requirement for Mac OS X Lion ... so on this basis I would say that GPT is more useful than MBR.

What other partition schemes are there and which one should be used in which situation?

How do boot sectors and multiple drives works?

I don't fully understand the concept of a boot sector, I was hoping someone could clear this up for me.

If you have two hard drives, with an OS installed on each, does each drive have its own boot sector? Does each drive need an MBR partition?

I've got Linux and Windows on two separate drives. I've had issues when installing Linux and grub, and now I've finally decided to use the Windows bootloader to start up. Would Windows have gotten rid of grub when i used /fixmbr or does it stay there on the boot sector of the other drive?

How to see if USB stick has MBR?

I have a USB stick supposed to be bootable, but the computer does not boot it. I suspect that there is no MBR (Master Boot Record).

How do I test if this is so, preferably from command line in Linux.

Clone a Windows Installation to a 3TB Hard Drive; MBR to GPT

I have Windows 7 Professional 64-bit installed on my desktop. Unfortunately for me and my wallet my hard drive is failing. I have purchased a 3TB hard drive as a replacement for my current 2TB drive. I would like to avoid as much hassle as possible in moving to this new drive so I would like to copy my current partition to the new drive using Gparted. The problem is that I suspect that my current partition is MBR, and I need GPT on my new drive since it is 3TB.

Can I simply copy the MBR partition onto the new disk and then convert it to GPT after the fact (can you even convert the type of a partition)?

Or would I need to somehow copy the contents of the partition into a GPT partition on the new drive?

How do I go about making this transistion?

Also, are there any issues I should be wary of booting to a GPT partition? If it matters, my motherboard is 1 year old as of May, 2012.

Edit: My motherboard is 1 day old. My old one does not have UEFI compatibility, so I decided to make an upgrade to Intel today given that I would need a UEFI motherboard to use my new HDD.

How much can I use a dying hard drive (bad sectors according to Hitachi Drive Fitness Test)?
I have assumed not at all, to be safe.

Edit 2: After two cloning attempts, nothing worked (direct cloning or cloning to an image). I just installed Windows fresh and then and copied everything I could. Honestly, after several days of stress with the cloning software, I would recommend this to anyone who has this problem in the future.

How do I create an MBR on a USB stick using DD command line tool

Okay I'm trying to create a BOOTABLE Windows7 image on a USB key from a Mac running Lion. My image is .iso format. I tried:

sudo dd if=/Users/myusername/Win7.iso of=/dev/disk1 bs=1m

And this succeeded in writing the files, except in DISK UTILITY on the mac, it shows the partition type as GUID Partition Table and not 'Master Boor Record'. Booting the key on my Vista computer yields the error "No boot sector on USB Device'

From what I can tell, bs=1m in the DD command should have left 1 Megabyte for the boot sector, but for some reason this area of the USB Key is not set up correctly so that it will boot

How can I fix this, or correctly use dd to write a bootable cd image such that it is now a bootable usb drive?

Note: in the instructions I read about, they recommended renaming my Win7.iso to Win7.dmg before using DD, which made absolutely no sense to me, so I didn't do it. I could try with that step now, but it takes 1.99 hours to write the image to the USB drive so there is a huge penalty to trial and error here. Thank you.

GRUB in MBR or Partition?

where should i install GRUB? MBR or Partition Boot Sector?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach?

Also, if we install the GRUB in the Partition Boot Sector then how the boot process works?

How can I convert a MBR partition to GPT without loss of data?

I partitioned my volume as MBR and was able to install Windows 7 + Mac OS X. Unfortunately, Disk Utility in Mac OS X cannot resize the Mac partition now because it's not a GPT volume. I also cannot upgrade to Mountain Lion because it requires a GPT volume. How can I safely convert the volume to GPT without data loss so that I can resize my volumes?

Windows (using UEFI boot on GPT disk) will no longer boot after adding an MBR hard disk

I have recently installed Windows 7 64 bit on a new SSD using UEFI boot and GPT. The system worked fine. After adding my old system HD to the system (that uses MBR), Windows will no longer boot correctly: When booting from the SSD, the normal boot screen appears and Windows tells me that it is loading files. Then the boot screen disappears and I am in an EFI shell, unable to boot. When I unplug the old HD, Windows boots again without complaints.

Can I somehow boot with this configuration without formating my old hard disk first?

I have an MSI Z77-G65A board. It is configured for UEFI boot, booting from the SSD. Both drives are set as independent HDs (no accidently activated RAID). The SSD is connected to a SATA-6G port and the old drive to a SATA-3G port.

Fixing windows MBR without Vista Recovery CD

I had Windows Vista + Ubuntu running on my system. I deleted the ubuntu partitions from Windows. However, when I start the system, GRUB throws up an Error 22 (missing partition) and does not let me boot into Windows.

The CD ROM on my laptop is fried and therefore I tried installing Ubuntu again using a USB install. However, the version Ubuntu 9.10 justs hangs in the load screen and does nothing. I do not have windows Vista Recovery CD (as it was a recovery partition in my laptop).

What are the options I have? How do I fix this?