Ultimate Boot CD: il sacro Graal del tecnico informatico

Ogni tecnico informatico dovrebbe avere con sé questo preziosissimo CD ricco di utility, si chiama Ultimate Boot CD. (more…)

mbr. master boot record.

freaking killed my laptop, I couldn't even boot into a recovery console or anything.

but how did i figure out it was the mbr.

i don't know.

first i panicked thinking that i completely killed my harddrive.

so then i got on my other computer....

and then managed to get a virus on that one... a rootkit.

it was awful. because then i had to fix that first.

and so i decided to do a pc recovery from a built in application, which told me that it wouldn't mess with my DATA...so I thought, okay what the heck sounds good to me.

I ran it...and it started up...from scratch. Like how it looked when I first bought the computer. Like with the whole...language setting...computer name...sound test.. etc..

Instead of going through with that... i first bawled about it. I literally just sat there and cried for a good 15 minutes before trying to do something.

So I went on another computer to see if there was some way that my data was still there... I gave up half way because it didn't seem possible..

SOOOO...I just went through with the whole registration thing.. and BAM..EVERYTHING was THERE! INCLUDING all the old shit that was deleted off my computer. rofl. some new programs were missing though, but no biggy, cuz NO DATA was missing. I was giddy. :)

OK, back to trying to fix the other broken computer.

I search for a  bunch of boot disks or partition managers etc. etc.

I also tried the Ultimate Boot CD, but that was for Linux and I'm on windows.. But at least it gave me a window into looking into my hard drive and I was at least able to learn that my hard drive was safe and sound, but I somehow just couldn't access it.

So I went and tweaked the boot.ini files for my main partition and the other partition that HP added in and gave my computer major issues. -_-

nothing worked. 

I then looked into GParted which was in the UBCD, and it looked like my main drive wasn't the "boot partition" whereas the stupid little extra 1 gb partition was the "boot" partition. So I kept trying to flag the main partition as "boot" but every time I start it up again, it somehow resets...and the boot flag goes back to that random partition. 

So I read up on some sort of Hex Editor, and tried that too.. with the whole changing 00 to 80 or 80 to 00. But that didn't work either.

=_=

And then I did more experimenting with the UBCD and I found that my main drive, Drive C: was "inactive"? 

So I had to somehow..make that active again...

Then I finally got Partition Wizard...which BTW i burned incorrectly onto a CD ..instead of buring the iso image, i just saved it as data...and so now..there's one dinky little file on a CD..that i probably will never use again. -_- garbage.

Anyway, I managed to unload the iso into a USB boot, and booted my lap top through it.

The program made me a bit more hopeful!  I easily found a button that said, "Set as Active" or something in that nature. So automatically, duh, I click on that, and then Apply.

I happily restart my computer.. but STILL NOTHING. STILL THAT BLACK SCREEN WITH A BLINKING CURSOR.  

I don't know why but because the Partition Wizard looked so pretty, I didn't lose hope. LoL. Lame I know, but it happens. :P

There was also and option that said "Set as Boot Partition" or something, so I tried that for my C drive, but it said that the windows folder couldn't be located. 

I was clicking around....and I saw a button to "Rebuild MBR"

I looked up on my other computer to see if there was any harm in doing that, like if data would be lost... but I didn't find anything, or at least I didn't look hard enough.

Didn't think there'd be anything too dire with rebuilding the mbr, because it's just a boot record.

But before I clicked on that, There was an option to fix the boot.ini for the entire Disk, I did that first, but it told me that none of the partitions were bootable... WHAT?!

So .... after much debate I just Rebuilt the MBR.. Applied.. And then Set my C drive to Active...Applied.. (just in case)..

Restarted the computer. Pulled out the usb, and let the boot start.

THE BLUE THINKING BLINKING COMPUTER RUNNING BUTTON STARTED FLASHING!!!!!!

AND THEN... IT STARTED...

I've never been so happy to see this:

And so that ended my 2-day nightmare. It's not so much that I cared if I had my computer...but it's because I have years worth of memories that I haven't backed up anywhere else.  Which is why I bawled when my other computer looked seemingly wiped. -_-