Quirks in Scandisk, Chkdsk, Fixmbr, Fixboot

[Franc Zabkar]

Re: Quirks in Scandisk, Chkdsk, Fixmbr, Fixboot

On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:09:47 +0100, "... et al."
<look@sig.bcause.this.is.invalid> put finger to keyboard and composed:

>Franc Zabkar wrote:

>> After I had the drive booting in the original machine, I ran Seagate's
>> SeaTools for DOS hard disc diagnostic. It found 6 bad sectors which it
>> was able to repair. A subsequent check with SmartUDM reported 56
>> reallocated sectors, suggesting that the drive may be on its way out.
>>
>> See http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/SmartUDM/40GB.RPT
>>
>> Coincidentally, both case #1 and case #2 had problems with bad sectors
>> on Seagate Barracuda 40GB hard discs.
>>
>
>Perhaps suggesting, but perhaps not necessarily. I have a 60 GB
>Seagate HDD and i checked it with a different SMART viewing
>program, DiskCheckup, in October 1996. It had 5 reallocated
>sectors then and it still have 5 when i checked it with SMARTUDM
>today. And that HDD have been used for several hours almost daily
>in the 17 months in between.

I had a similar experience with a Seagate 13GB drive. It was carrying
lots of bad sectors for several years until I recently took it out
service after it started to grow new defects on a weekly basis. The
drive had one "pending" sector for its entire life. This sector never
had a chance to be reallocated because a format had marked it as bad
in the FAT and Windows knew not to write to it ever again.

>BTW, i just downloaded SMARTUDM. It unarchived fine and the
>DOS-program runs fine. However, the four text-files in the
>archive show mostly as gibberish .. i tried a few different
>text-editors, they all show it the same .. is it the same for you?

The language is Russian. The text files display correctly in my
browser, Opera, when I select "Cyrillic codepage 866" encoding.

Once I do this, I can cut and paste the text into Google's translator:
http://translate.google.com/translate_t

======================================================================
excerpt from smartfaq.txt
======================================================================
Q1: What is S.M.A.R.T.?
A1: Technology S.M.A.R.T. -- Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting
Technology (from the English. "Technology Samodiagnostiki, Analysis
and Father - ta ") - was designed to improve the reliability and
safety data on hard disks. In most cases, the SMART-compatible
perceptions device to precede the appearance of the most likely
mistakes, thereby allowing the user to backup Data and / or completely
replace its drive to break down.
======================================================================

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

 

[jameshanley39@yahoo.co.uk]

Re: Quirks in Scandisk, Chkdsk, Fixmbr, Fixboot

On 14 Mar, 09:35, "MEB" <meb@not h...@hotmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
>  There are other disk tools which seem to work better/easier with NTFS and
> NT5 file systems. Check out Testdisk, HDAT, and MHDD.http://www.cgsecurity..org/wiki/TestDisk_Download- now at version 6.9http://hddguru.com/http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/http://www.hdat2.com/
>
> BTW Franc, you're part of the reason I posted that link for the non-GUI
> Microsoft OS in here.

which link? you mean the links to DOS programs?


Though you might want to get in on the ground floor of
> what will likely translate to the nex-gen/new processor base coding, for
> what may be used in the non-legacy Windows. Kinda like the old DOS days and
> downloading betas from Microsoft's BBS before it turned into the monster it
> is ... (now if only they were paying the beta testers.. hahaha)
>


Just for the hell of it. How do you connect to the microsoft BBS?
I know it involves a prog like hyperterminal, and a telephone number.
But I cannot even find a telephone number.

 

[MEB]

Re: Quirks in Scandisk, Chkdsk, Fixmbr, Fixboot



<jameshanley39@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:c7900ccd-3502-4876-a223-0b36f4c032e0@u10g2000prn.googlegroups.com...
On 14 Mar, 09:35, "MEB" <meb@not h...@hotmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
> There are other disk tools which seem to work better/easier with NTFS and
> NT5 file systems. Check out Testdisk, HDAT, and
MHDD.http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download- now at version
6.9http://hddguru.com/http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD
/http://www.hdat2.com/
>
> BTW Franc, you're part of the reason I posted that link for the non-GUI
> Microsoft OS in here.

| which link? you mean the links to DOS programs?

PER PRIOR POST:
Re: For the Geeks - Microsoft's non-Windows OS Singularity
Interested in testing Microsoft's new non-Windows OS which uses "completely
new" {non-legacy} code?

RDK 1.1 - version 6709

Singularity
http://www.codeplex.com/singularity
http://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/
- MEB

| Though you might want to get in on the ground floor of
> what will likely translate to the nex-gen/new processor base coding, for
> what may be used in the non-legacy Windows. Kinda like the old DOS days
and
> downloading betas from Microsoft's BBS before it turned into the monster
it
> is ... (now if only they were paying the beta testers.. hahaha)
>


| Just for the hell of it. How do you connect to the microsoft BBS?
| I know it involves a prog like hyperterminal, and a telephone number.
| But I cannot even find a telephone number.

That was WAY back, before the public Internet.... ARPANET was the ONLY
thing going at that time, except for people {like myself} who ran a BBS
{Bulletin Board System}.
http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/docs/arpa.html
http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_arpanet.htm



* MEB
http://peoplescounsel.orgfree.com
--
_________

 

[MEB]

Re: Quirks in Scandisk, Chkdsk, Fixmbr, Fixboot



I got it [though good to correct it so no-one pounces on it]... but yeah
scandisk isn't an option in XP, its handled by AUTOCHK, AUTOFMT, Disk
Management and Disk Defragmenter, and the related HAL and DLLs.

It would [SFC - restore points - system file protection] open a whole
nuther cano'worms...

* MEB
http://peoplescounsel.orgfree.com
--
_________

 

[... et al.]

Re: Quirks in Scandisk, Chkdsk, Fixmbr, Fixboot

Franc Zabkar wrote:

> "... et al." put finger to keyboard and composed:
>

>> BTW, i just downloaded SMARTUDM. It unarchived fine and the
>> DOS-program runs fine. However, the four text-files in the
>> archive show mostly as gibberish .. i tried a few different
>> text-editors, they all show it the same .. is it the same for you?
>
> The language is Russian. The text files display correctly in my
> browser, Opera, when I select "Cyrillic codepage 866" encoding.

It was strange that the name of one of the files is
'WHATSNEW.TXT', but that the contents are in Cyrillic letters.
But yes, i can see it in a web-browser here also. Easy way to
test various 'Character Encodings'. Thanks.


>
> Once I do this, I can cut and paste the text into Google's translator:
> http://translate.google.com/translate_t
>
> ======================================================================
> excerpt from smartfaq.txt
> ======================================================================
> Q1: What is S.M.A.R.T.?
> A1: Technology S.M.A.R.T. -- Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting
> Technology (from the English. "Technology Samodiagnostiki, Analysis
> and Father - ta ") - was designed to improve the reliability and
> safety data on hard disks. In most cases, the SMART-compatible
> perceptions device to precede the appearance of the most likely
> mistakes, thereby allowing the user to backup Data and / or completely
> replace its drive to break down.
> ======================================================================
>
> - Franc Zabkar


--
No habla

Please followup in the newsgroup.
E-mail address is invalid due to spam-control.

 

[Franc Zabkar]

Re: Quirks in Scandisk, Chkdsk, Fixmbr, Fixboot

On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 01:26:09 -0400, "MEB" <meb@not here@hotmail.com>
put finger to keyboard and composed:

>"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
>news:lfmrt31gsn197oq233venjp258m04h2okj@4ax.com...
>| On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 02:49:15 -0400, "MEB" <meb@not here@hotmail.com>
>| put finger to keyboard and composed:
>|
>| >"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
>| >news:fpsot31cqbpk9hqca2pljhbums5dveqg99@4ax.com...
>|
>| >| On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:35:07 -0400, "MEB" <meb@not here@hotmail.com>
>| >| put finger to keyboard and composed:
>| >|
>| >| >"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
>| >| >news:ia9jt35o6fi1rrjkqfvm3p0cuskn84aohj@4ax.com...
>|
>| >| >| ... I now tried
>| >| >| FIXMBR. This command warned me that the MBR contained unknown or
>| >| >| damaged code, so I went ahead and allowed it to refresh the code. It
>| >| >| reported success but when I ran FIXMBR a second time, it still
>| >| >| complained of unknown or damaged code.
>| >| >
>| >| > First I would question whether you cold rebooted between the two
>FIXMBR
>| >| >[FIXMBR {ugh} which I found to be questionable when using] trys.
>| >|
>| >| I don't think I did.
>| >
>| > Kind of like fdisking a drive, gotta reboot.
>|
>| I can see why you would need to reboot before any newly created
>| partitions and logical drives would be detected, but I can't see why
>| you would need to do the same after refreshing the code in the MBR.
>| AFAIK, the MBR code doesn't remain in RAM after booting ...

>| - Franc Zabkar
>
> And how does it do this when it has already been accessed upon bootup, and
>found as faulty. The disk couldn't be accessed properly, so how can it now,
>when the code and jumps were wrong to start with and have not been refreshed
>yet.. You could see it with an editor, but the BIOS has already transferred
>activity elsewhere [particularly in NT].
>
> Are you indicating that there were no errors when attempting to access the
>hard disk after doing so?
>______
>* MEB
>http://peoplescounsel.orgfree.com

I don't think any question regarding the integrity of the code in the
MBR is of any consequence because I booted to the recovery console of
an XP CD. I'm guessing that FIXMBR should work in much the same way as
FDISK /MBR in Win9x/DOS, ie it should refresh the code in the first
physical sector of the HD, regardless of what is already there. FIXMBR
appears to go one step further by warning the user if the MBR code
appears to be foreign or damaged, but that's the only difference,
AFAICT. FDISK and DISKPART appear to perform similar functions when
accessed via their interactive menus. I would think that FDISK,
FIXMBR, and DISKPART would always be aware of any changes they
themselves have made to the MBR and partition table, without the
necessity of a reboot. A reboot would only be necessary to allow the
*operating system* to become aware of the same changes. During a
reboot, the OS would enumerate the logical drives by looking at the
partition table. Thereafter, I can't see that the OS would need to
consult the partition table again. I would think that if you deleted
the partition table while the OS was running, then the OS would
continue to run with the same drive parameters that it had discovered
at bootup ... until the next bootup.

The suggestion that FIXMBR requires a reboot before it becomes aware
of the changes it has made would mean that it would be consulting some
stale memory cache. This makes no sense because the first time you run
FIXMBR there is no MBR code in RAM (it has been flushed early in the
boot process). So if FIXMBR consults the HD the first time it is
executed, then why wouldn't it do the same the second time it is run?

This is what I see when I execute ...

MEM /D /P

.... from a DOS prompt in Win98SE:

=====================================================================
Conventional Memory Detail:

Segment Total Name Type
------- ---------------- ----------- --------
00000 1,024 (1K) Interrupt Vector
00040 256 (0K) ROM Communication
Area
00050 512 (1K) DOS Communication
Area
00070 1,424 (1K) IO System Data
CON System Device Driver
AUX System Device Driver
PRN System Device Driver
CLOCK$ System Device Driver
A: - D: System Device Driver

<snip>

=====================================================================

Win9x/DOS has loaded "System Device Drivers" for each of my logical
drives (A: - D. I suspect that if I were to use FDISK to edit the
partition table, and then re-run the above MEM command without first
rebooting, nothing would change. I'm betting you would still be able
to write new files to the C: drive without loss of data ... provided
that you restored the original partition table prior to rebooting. But
that's only a guess - I don't have a test machine to try this.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

 

[MEB]

Re: Quirks in Scandisk, Chkdsk, Fixmbr, Fixboot



"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
news:53i0u3117q5lkhua2j7m3jpp7urjpr46ic@4ax.com...
| On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 01:26:09 -0400, "MEB" <meb@not here@hotmail.com>
| put finger to keyboard and composed:
|
| >"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
| >news:lfmrt31gsn197oq233venjp258m04h2okj@4ax.com...
| >| On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 02:49:15 -0400, "MEB" <meb@not here@hotmail.com>
| >| put finger to keyboard and composed:
| >|
| >| >"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
| >| >news:fpsot31cqbpk9hqca2pljhbums5dveqg99@4ax.com...
| >|
| >| >| On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:35:07 -0400, "MEB" <meb@not here@hotmail.com>
| >| >| put finger to keyboard and composed:
| >| >|
| >| >| >"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
| >| >| >news:ia9jt35o6fi1rrjkqfvm3p0cuskn84aohj@4ax.com...
| >|
| >| >| >| ... I now tried
| >| >| >| FIXMBR. This command warned me that the MBR contained unknown or
| >| >| >| damaged code, so I went ahead and allowed it to refresh the code.
It
| >| >| >| reported success but when I ran FIXMBR a second time, it still
| >| >| >| complained of unknown or damaged code.
| >| >| >
| >| >| > First I would question whether you cold rebooted between the two
| >FIXMBR
| >| >| >[FIXMBR {ugh} which I found to be questionable when using] trys.
| >| >|
| >| >| I don't think I did.
| >| >
| >| > Kind of like fdisking a drive, gotta reboot.
| >|
| >| I can see why you would need to reboot before any newly created
| >| partitions and logical drives would be detected, but I can't see why
| >| you would need to do the same after refreshing the code in the MBR.
| >| AFAIK, the MBR code doesn't remain in RAM after booting ...
|
| >| - Franc Zabkar
| >
| > And how does it do this when it has already been accessed upon bootup,
and
| >found as faulty. The disk couldn't be accessed properly, so how can it
now,
| >when the code and jumps were wrong to start with and have not been
refreshed
| >yet.. You could see it with an editor, but the BIOS has already
transferred
| >activity elsewhere [particularly in NT].
| >
| > Are you indicating that there were no errors when attempting to access
the
| >hard disk after doing so?
| >______
| >* MEB
| >http://peoplescounsel.orgfree.com
|
| I don't think any question regarding the integrity of the code in the
| MBR is of any consequence because I booted to the recovery console of
| an XP CD. I'm guessing that FIXMBR should work in much the same way as
| FDISK /MBR in Win9x/DOS, ie it should refresh the code in the first
| physical sector of the HD, regardless of what is already there. FIXMBR
| appears to go one step further by warning the user if the MBR code
| appears to be foreign or damaged, but that's the only difference,
| AFAICT. FDISK and DISKPART appear to perform similar functions when
| accessed via their interactive menus. I would think that FDISK,
| FIXMBR, and DISKPART would always be aware of any changes they
| themselves have made to the MBR and partition table, without the
| necessity of a reboot. A reboot would only be necessary to allow the
| *operating system* to become aware of the same changes. During a
| reboot, the OS would enumerate the logical drives by looking at the
| partition table. Thereafter, I can't see that the OS would need to
| consult the partition table again. I would think that if you deleted
| the partition table while the OS was running, then the OS would
| continue to run with the same drive parameters that it had discovered
| at bootup ... until the next bootup.
|
| The suggestion that FIXMBR requires a reboot before it becomes aware
| of the changes it has made would mean that it would be consulting some
| stale memory cache. This makes no sense because the first time you run
| FIXMBR there is no MBR code in RAM (it has been flushed early in the
| boot process). So if FIXMBR consults the HD the first time it is
| executed, then why wouldn't it do the same the second time it is run?
|
| This is what I see when I execute ...
|
| MEM /D /P
|
| ... from a DOS prompt in Win98SE:
|
| =====================================================================
| Conventional Memory Detail:
|
| Segment Total Name Type
| ------- ---------------- ----------- --------
| 00000 1,024 (1K) Interrupt Vector
| 00040 256 (0K) ROM Communication
| Area
| 00050 512 (1K) DOS Communication
| Area
| 00070 1,424 (1K) IO System Data
| CON System Device Driver
| AUX System Device Driver
| PRN System Device Driver
| CLOCK$ System Device Driver
| A: - D: System Device Driver
|
| <snip>
|
| =====================================================================
|
| Win9x/DOS has loaded "System Device Drivers" for each of my logical
| drives (A: - D. I suspect that if I were to use FDISK to edit the
| partition table, and then re-run the above MEM command without first
| rebooting, nothing would change. I'm betting you would still be able
| to write new files to the C: drive without loss of data ... provided
| that you restored the original partition table prior to rebooting. But
| that's only a guess - I don't have a test machine to try this.
|
| - Franc Zabkar
| --
| Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

You're running the Recovery Console from NT, NOT from DOS.
NT handles disk access in a different form... a common mistake made by *DOS
users* is to think NT works like DOS does.
I think we already did this before, to a point, in those prior XP and hard
drive discussions.

--
MEB
http://peoplescounsel.orgfree.com
--
_________

 

[Franc Zabkar]

Re: Quirks in Scandisk, Chkdsk, Fixmbr, Fixboot

On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 02:49:15 -0400, "MEB" <meb@not here@hotmail.com>
put finger to keyboard and composed:

>"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
>news:fpsot31cqbpk9hqca2pljhbums5dveqg99@4ax.com...

>| >| ... I now tried
>| >| FIXMBR. This command warned me that the MBR contained unknown or
>| >| damaged code, so I went ahead and allowed it to refresh the code. It
>| >| reported success but when I ran FIXMBR a second time, it still
>| >| complained of unknown or damaged code.
>| >
>| > First I would question whether you cold rebooted between the two FIXMBR
>| >[FIXMBR {ugh} which I found to be questionable when using] trys.
>|
>| I don't think I did.
>
> Kind of like fdisking a drive, gotta reboot.

The following MSKB article identifies a FIXMBR bug in the Win2K
recovery console, but I wonder if it applies to WinXP Home as well.

Error Message When You Run fixmbr Command:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/266745/

SYMPTOMS

When you attempt to run the fixmbr command in the Microsoft Windows
2000 recovery console, your computer system may display the following
error message:

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?

RESOLUTION

Ignore the error message described in the "Symptoms" section of this
article. The fixmbr command can safely rewrite the MBR.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft
products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

The fixmbr command causes this error message to be displayed on your
computer system whenever you run the command, regardless of the state
of the Master Boot Record (MBR).

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

 

[Franc Zabkar]

Re: Quirks in Scandisk, Chkdsk, Fixmbr, Fixboot

On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 01:10:37 -0400, "MEB" <meb@not here@hotmail.com>

> I sent you, from the master site address, some zipped *readable text* of a
>few files from XP PRO which might be of interest you [though you probably
>already did]. Look at the command sequences, messages, and other. At
>minimum, they give some search strings to work from when playing around in
>XP and a hexeditor.
>
>* MEB
>http://peoplescounsel.orgfree.com

I got it, thanks, although I'm not sure what to do with it because I
no longer have any XP boxes to play with.

FWIW, here are various boot sector templates that I extracted from
Autochk.exe, and the MBR template that I found inside Diskpart.exe:

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/XP_Boot/XP_Boot.zip (11KB)

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

 

[MEB]

Re: Quirks in Scandisk, Chkdsk, Fixmbr, Fixboot

Thanks Franc.

An FWIW: download the XP Startup disks if you want copies of what gets
loaded to start the Recovery Console.

--
MEB
http://peoplescounsel.orgfree.com
--
_________

"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
news:8g11u397kb5jf609mns0ggssd4aqtp3efl@4ax.com...
| On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 01:10:37 -0400, "MEB" <meb@not here@hotmail.com>
|
| > I sent you, from the master site address, some zipped *readable text* of
a
| >few files from XP PRO which might be of interest you [though you probably
| >already did]. Look at the command sequences, messages, and other. At
| >minimum, they give some search strings to work from when playing around
in
| >XP and a hexeditor.
| >
| >* MEB
| >http://peoplescounsel.orgfree.com
|
| I got it, thanks, although I'm not sure what to do with it because I
| no longer have any XP boxes to play with.
|
| FWIW, here are various boot sector templates that I extracted from
| Autochk.exe, and the MBR template that I found inside Diskpart.exe:
|
| http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/XP_Boot/XP_Boot.zip (11KB)
|
| - Franc Zabkar
| --
| Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

 

[MEB]

Re: Quirks in Scandisk, Chkdsk, Fixmbr, Fixboot


"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
news:ds01u3pu2iebbaubb9ifbvlm1sc5lgmtng@4ax.com...
| On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 02:49:15 -0400, "MEB" <meb@not here@hotmail.com>
| put finger to keyboard and composed:
|
| >"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
| >news:fpsot31cqbpk9hqca2pljhbums5dveqg99@4ax.com...
|
| >| >| ... I now tried
| >| >| FIXMBR. This command warned me that the MBR contained unknown or
| >| >| damaged code, so I went ahead and allowed it to refresh the code. It
| >| >| reported success but when I ran FIXMBR a second time, it still
| >| >| complained of unknown or damaged code.
| >| >
| >| > First I would question whether you cold rebooted between the two
FIXMBR
| >| >[FIXMBR {ugh} which I found to be questionable when using] trys.
| >|
| >| I don't think I did.
| >
| > Kind of like fdisking a drive, gotta reboot.
|
| The following MSKB article identifies a FIXMBR bug in the Win2K
| recovery console, but I wonder if it applies to WinXP Home as well.
|
| Error Message When You Run fixmbr Command:
| http://support.microsoft.com/kb/266745/
|
| SYMPTOMS
|
| When you attempt to run the fixmbr command in the Microsoft Windows
| 2000 recovery console, your computer system may display the following
| error message:
|
| 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?
|
| RESOLUTION
|
| Ignore the error message described in the "Symptoms" section of this
| article. The fixmbr command can safely rewrite the MBR.
|
| STATUS
|
| Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft
| products that are listed at the beginning of this article.
|
| MORE INFORMATION
|
| The fixmbr command causes this error message to be displayed on your
| computer system whenever you run the command, regardless of the state
| of the Master Boot Record (MBR).
|
| - Franc Zabkar
| --
| Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Yeah, I remember that one now, likely part of the reason I asked what
versions you ran, IIRC, there was an update for XP [or maybe included in SP1
or the DK] that was supposed to fix some of the old errors... another memory
sloshing around in the brain..
--
MEB
http://peoplescounsel.orgfree.com
--
_________

 

[Franc Zabkar]

Re: Quirks in Scandisk, Chkdsk, Fixmbr, Fixboot

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:15:51 -0400, "MEB" <meb@not here@hotmail.com>
put finger to keyboard and composed:

>"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
>news:ds01u3pu2iebbaubb9ifbvlm1sc5lgmtng@4ax.com...

>| The following MSKB article identifies a FIXMBR bug in the Win2K
>| recovery console, but I wonder if it applies to WinXP Home as well.
>|
>| Error Message When You Run fixmbr Command:
>| http://support.microsoft.com/kb/266745/
>|
>| SYMPTOMS
>|
>| When you attempt to run the fixmbr command in the Microsoft Windows
>| 2000 recovery console, your computer system may display the following
>| error message:
>|
>| This computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot
>| record.

>| MORE INFORMATION
>|
>| The fixmbr command causes this error message to be displayed on your
>| computer system whenever you run the command, regardless of the state
>| of the Master Boot Record (MBR).
>|
>| - Franc Zabkar
>
> Yeah, I remember that one now, likely part of the reason I asked what
>versions you ran, IIRC, there was an update for XP [or maybe included in SP1
>or the DK] that was supposed to fix some of the old errors... another memory
>sloshing around in the brain..
>--
>MEB
>http://peoplescounsel.orgfree.com

How do you apply a service pack to the recovery console on a pressed
CD? ;-|

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

 

[MEB]

Re: Quirks in Scandisk, Chkdsk, Fixmbr, Fixboot



"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
news:fks2u3pfpb5g4n2mtpjp3d54r0qemlj0ha@4ax.com...
| On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:15:51 -0400, "MEB" <meb@not here@hotmail.com>
| put finger to keyboard and composed:
|
| >"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
| >news:ds01u3pu2iebbaubb9ifbvlm1sc5lgmtng@4ax.com...
|
| >| The following MSKB article identifies a FIXMBR bug in the Win2K
| >| recovery console, but I wonder if it applies to WinXP Home as well.
| >|
| >| Error Message When You Run fixmbr Command:
| >| http://support.microsoft.com/kb/266745/
| >|
| >| SYMPTOMS
| >|
| >| When you attempt to run the fixmbr command in the Microsoft Windows
| >| 2000 recovery console, your computer system may display the following
| >| error message:
| >|
| >| This computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot
| >| record.
|
| >| MORE INFORMATION
| >|
| >| The fixmbr command causes this error message to be displayed on your
| >| computer system whenever you run the command, regardless of the state
| >| of the Master Boot Record (MBR).
| >|
| >| - Franc Zabkar
| >
| > Yeah, I remember that one now, likely part of the reason I asked what
| >versions you ran, IIRC, there was an update for XP [or maybe included in
SP1
| >or the DK] that was supposed to fix some of the old errors... another
memory
| >sloshing around in the brain..
| >--
| >MEB
| >http://peoplescounsel.orgfree.com
|
| How do you apply a service pack to the recovery console on a pressed
| CD? ;-|
|
| - Franc Zabkar
| --
| Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

HAHAHA, good one. You don't, but the technique is called slip streaming for
the disk you then create.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/828930/ - How to integrate software updates
into your Windows Installation source files
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/900910/en-us
..
You can modify the startup disks.

--
MEB
http://peoplescounsel.orgfree.com
--
_________