Hey I need some quick help here for a seemingly simple problem. Simply put, I've got a messed up mbr on a laptop. Easy enough fix with the windows cd, but the thing is the laptop is in Montana at the moment, and my friend has no access to a windows cd. There is no floppy drive in the laptop either, so a bootdisk won't work. So, can someone direct me to somewhere that I can either download a windows boot CD, or a little program that will make a bootable cd that has fixboot or fixmbr on it?


edit: looks like ultimate boot cd has a program on it that will do the job, but are there any smaller images? I'm afraid that >100 megs is a bit to ask from an internet cafe.

Thanks,
-0ce

See if this will help you. BartPE

Ah good idea, but that won't work. It needs a windows cd to slipstream with. Right now I'm checking on the idea of using an ultimate boot cd iso for windows and taking off all the tools except the two mbr tools on there. That would cut the size down to almost 30 megs, and I could email it.

There's a XP quickboot diskette at bootdisk.com
Description
Mark

Yeah, I checked that out a bit ago. I put it on a floppy and then made a bootable cd out of the floppy using poweriso (which seems to me should work fine), but it doesn't seem to work on either of my computers. I think I'm getting close though. I just need to get the equivilant of mbrfix for dos, and I'll be fine. See, I took a regular windows 98 floppy bootdisk, added this program to it (http://www.sysint.no/Nedlasting/MbrFix.htm), and it WOULD work, except i found out that program can't be run under dos. I'm reluctant to try using fdisk /mbr on a windows xp based computer.


Any other ideas? They would be much appreciated.


edit: Frankly, I think the only way I can do this is by mailing a windows cd to my friend in Montana. . .I know that fixboot and fixmbr would do the trick. If there's any easier way, be sure to let me know.

Alright sorry to revive an old topic, but I really need help now. After sending the windows cd, my friend boots off it and into the recovery console, only to find she needs an administrator password. It's nothing she knows about, and "", "password" "123", the usuals don't work. So I find a fix online which uses an offline registry editor to change some registry settings, so that it doesn't ask for the password. . .Still no luck. It doesn't work for some reason.


---If you're lazy start reading here
Basically, anyone got any other quick ways to write a little default master boot record to a windows box? I'd rather not have her download a whole linux live cd. . .I need a small little app that will go on a cd (no floppy drive). Please help?

Also: for some reason when she boots off the cd and trys to boot to windows, it still goes to grub and gives an error. . .I don't know why I can't just bypass the original boot loader.

Have you tried just pressing Enter when it asks for a password?

I told her to and she said it didn't work. . .Although that worked fine on my home dell machine. I still think she is pressing something else there, I really don't know.

Just read about this freeware tool, dunno if it has the capability that you need but it may be worth a read: http://findandmount.com/

Nah, looks good but i need something that will work off a boot cd. . .I'm considering just making her get a linux live cd and fixing it over the phone for her, i've been looking for easier ways forever now.

Just for future reference for very large files to send I use yousendit.com. I can send very large files with no problem.

Yeah I just stumbled on this too: http://franticindustries.com/blog/2007/07/...r-files-online/

A friend sent this to me. It claims to have 25 gB of free online storage: http://www.mediamax.com/