Damaged boot sector

[fmg00]

Hi, i had a virus (wyx.c b) that afects the Master Boot; anyway i remove it using Norton rescue disks in msdos, but when i reboot i couldnt enter Windows, it says invalid system disk or something like that.
The question is how could i repair the Boot sector, i tried fdisk /mbr, but didnt work.
Is there some utility that could help me? I found one called Media tools, but is shareware (and i couldnt find a s/n anywhere) and the prog is $500
What do you think, should i try to fix the boot sector, or just recover some files with Easy recovery and reformat again? Maybe easy recovery has a utility to fix this?
The pc is a laptop with Windows ME
Thanks in advance

fmg00

[aqlo]

The repair harmed your system files
do you have a bootdisk?
essentially you want to sys c:
but it Has to be the exact same version you already have
do you have a windows disk to be sure?

I can fetch you a valid system disk online for whatever version I think
*searchin under 'krell'*
but you are on your own if windows is also damaged

here here is a link
http://bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

[fmg00]

I do have a boot disk, but when i try to access c: i t says invalid disk, abort, error,...
How do i find out wich version do i have? I just know its Windows ME, but its no my computer so i have no clue about almost anything else. I dont have a Windows ME cd , just the XP one.
Another thing, i try to install XP and it says that the partition type is "Unknow" so it asks me to format it.
Anyway Windows ME is in spanish, thats the only thing i know for sure.

[aqlo]

Yikes I don't have a espanol version on tap
Also sounds like you have more trouble than just sys then
can you run scandisk from your bootdisk you have
see if it can see it
*shrugs*
there are people here smarter than me hopefully they will speak up soon

[fmg00]

More problems... now when i try to boot from a diskette it gives a "invalid i/o disk", so i cant enter anything...
Help?

[Foreverboard]

sounds like its not just the MBR thats messed. the easiest way is to slave the drive into another computer and save as much data as you can. then jsut redo the OS with Xp or whatever. trying to repair a MBR or the indexing files is hell. Without being able to see the drive or have the OS upgrade see the file system type you are basicly out of luck. If you can slave the drive you can try and run Checkdisk on it and see if it fixes the file system enough to let the OS upgrade see the filesystem type. If you had ME you could have Fat32 or NTFS file systems. If you have Fat32 you will want to redo the Harddrive anyway since XP wont suppose Fat32 very well.........

[collideous]

Originally posted by Foreverboard
sounds like its not just the MBR thats messed. the easiest way is to slave the drive into another computer and save as much data as you can. then jsut redo the OS with Xp or whatever. trying to repair a MBR or the indexing files is hell. Without being able to see the drive or have the OS upgrade see the file system type you are basicly out of luck. If you can slave the drive you can try and run Checkdisk on it and see if it fixes the file system enough to let the OS upgrade see the filesystem type. If you had ME you could have Fat32 or NTFS file systems. If you have Fat32 you will want to redo the Harddrive anyway since XP wont suppose Fat32 very well.........

I can only double that. Try to backup the data from that disk, reformat it to NTFS, and do a clean XP install.

[fmg00]

Thanks everybody for their replies and help.
I could fix the problem after all using a small freeware utility called TestDisk. it rebuild my Master boot sector and i could enter windows normally without losing anything.
I recommend this util for anyone who has this problem or who wants to recover a lost partition.
Thanks all

fmg00

[aqlo]

That's great news fmg glad to hear it

http://www.gnu.org/directory/sysadmin/conf/TestDisk.html