Repairing the windows boot sector and/or master boot record (MBR) of Windows XP using Windows 7 commands
I have a SSD drive with Windows XP SP3 32-bit edition. Now, in order to repair the boot sector or the master boot record (MBR), can I only use a Windows XP Recovery disc or will a Windows Vista or Windows 7 Recovery disc also work, even though the command syntax is different?
Thank you.
2 Answers
Repairing the boot sector will not be possible from anything newer than XP. Beginning from Windows Vista, Microsoft changed how the boot sector was stored and handled. In Windows XP, the boot information is stored in the boot.ini file located on the partition where Windows is installed.
In newer versions of Windows a BCD (Boot Configuration Data) Store is now used, and while they're working in similar ways the setup and reovery of the boot.ini and BCD is different and thus Windows XP boot sector can not be reovered using Windows Vista or Windows 7 discs.
4Windows 7 (NT6) can fix MBR and PBR (partition boot record) to XP (NT5) format.
The utility used is bootsect.exe and can be found in Windows 7 recovery environment. Just boot Recovery/Install DVD/USB and go to command prompt.
bootsect /nt52 c: /force /mbr - where c: is mapped to partition in question (change if necessary)
This utility is also available in Windows 8/8.1 in OS environment in \Windows\System32.
It is the BCD (Boot Config Data) which replaced boot.ini file. Also ntldr (XP) was replaced by bootmgr + winload.exe in Vista and later.
You can use Visual BCD Editor / Dual-boot Repair tool which has a simple GUI form to write MBR/PBR in XP or Windows 7 format (uses bootsect.exe as work-horse).
More in general
"Zoraya ter Beek, age 29, just died by assisted suicide in the Netherlands. She was physically healthy, but psychologically depressed. It's an abomination that an entire society would actively facilitate, even encourage, someone ending their own life because they had no hope. Th…"
