Master Boot Record Issues. Need Some Suggestions

[Freak'n Big Panda]

I've recently partitioned and imaged my T60 laptop only to find that it wont boot into windows. I've got two partitions, one with my windows install and another with nothing on it (to use a data storage) and I got an error message saying that hal.dll was missing or not found. I figured that it was trying to boot to the wrong partition and so I went in and tried to edit the master boot record using the ptedit utility that was provided with the copy of partition magic I own. Needless to say things went wrong, no partitions are currently recognized and obviously my computer will not boot. Here's my question:

What do I have to do to get the computer to boot? What changes need to be made to the boot record?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in Advance!

 

[ERP]

Theoretically if nothing else changed, you could just build a new MBR, but I don't know of any software that will do it without writing over the partition boot records.

If you write over the partition boot records you'd have to restore the filesystem information which is basically the same problem.

 

[{Sniping}Waste]

You might be able to boot off the Windows install CD and use the repair function to repair it. Don't use the the repair console. Go with install windows and when it gets to the point were it wants you to chose were to install the OS it should know if you have a OS installed and if its damage and give you the repair option.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Theoretically if nothing else changed, you could just build a new MBR, but I don't know of any software that will do it without writing over the partition boot records.

If you write over the partition boot records you'd have to restore the filesystem information which is basically the same problem.

fdisk /mbr under any version of MS-DOS?
I don't quite get what you are saying about "partition boot records", you might know better than me about some stuff there.
well anyway, I suggest getting and burning the "ultimate boot CD", it's full of useful stuff. among it there's ranish partition manager which can write the MBR and set the "boot flag" on the apropriate partition. (nothing about file systems yet).

or, I might not have understood. are the partitions totally borked for now? if you only borked the MBR I think ranish should see them and by doing the stuff above you should get back to that delightful "missing hal.dll". which should be about a borked boot.ini file, and repairable with.. the repair console if I'm to believe this http://www.compphix.com/corrupthal.html

please note that boot.ini is two steps after the MBR I think . in between there's the "NTLDR MISSING" message (and I can imagine you have "DISK BOOT FAILURE" or nothing at all)
even if I might be wrong somewhere I believe at least my stuff is not harmful.

 

[t0y]

You can try posting your current table and as much information as you can about what it looked like before your changes. The order of the entries, including empty ones, may be important.

Maybe we can find something there, but don't hold your breath...

 

[Albuquerque]

Ok, new direction to the troubleshooting...

I personally use a Lenovo T60 every day, and there's a quirk with the Windows OS and the AHCI controller on this box that you may not be aware of until it's too late.

Your error is cannot find HAL.DLL, which means the OS "booted" fine, but crashed trying to load the HAL off the local drive. You know what causess this (other than the obvious bad HDD issues)? A missing or corrupt mass storage controller driver. Why do I know this? Because the exact same damned thing happened to me and my T60 when I imaged it.

Wanna try the fix?

Go into the BIOS (F2 at the IBM (Lenovo?) boot splash screen), go into Settings, SATA, and flip it to Compatibility mode. Save and exit, and see if your OS boots now. If so, you owe me a virtual cookie. If not, well, hey I guess it was worth a shot

 

[_xxx_]

Look for GetDataBack and use it to save your stuff from the disc, then reformat/partition with PartitionMagic or such and reinstall.

 

[Freak'n Big Panda]

fdisk /mbr under any version of MS-DOS?
I don't quite get what you are saying about "partition boot records", you might know better than me about some stuff there.
well anyway, I suggest getting and burning the "ultimate boot CD", it's full of useful stuff. among it there's ranish partition manager which can write the MBR and set the "boot flag" on the apropriate partition. (nothing about file systems yet).

or, I might not have understood. are the partitions totally borked for now? if you only borked the MBR I think ranish should see them and by doing the stuff above you should get back to that delightful "missing hal.dll". which should be about a borked boot.ini file, and repairable with.. the repair console if I'm to believe this http://www.compphix.com/corrupthal.html

please note that boot.ini is two steps after the MBR I think . in between there's the "NTLDR MISSING" message (and I can imagine you have "DISK BOOT FAILURE" or nothing at all)
even if I might be wrong somewhere I believe at least my stuff is not harmful.

awesome ranish was able to repair the MBR and my drive is booting now (no other steps were needed) thanks a lot! I'm assuming the only problem was that the MBR was pointing to the wrong partition, I'm not sure why this would produce the missing hal.dll error though.