Wednesday, April 20, 2011

fixmbr on Windows XP

My Windows XP computer broke this week when I was installing Turbo Tax 2010. It got stuck upon booting after the screen said “Verifying DMI Pool Data…”.  After googling around for answers, I tried to reset the CMOS, upgrade the motherboard BIOS, but nothing worked.

The last thing I tried (by default, because I stopped trying once the problem was solved) was fixing the Master Boot Record or MBR. The Windows XP Recovery Console can fix this for you, when can be loaded by booting to a Windows XP installation CD. There is a built-in utility called fixmbr which will fix your MBR for you.  See http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx for more information. Remember to enter “1″ when the Recovery Console asks you “When Windows installation would you like to log into”.  You’ll also need to know the Administrator password.

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