Fixing a Missing or Corrupt Windows Bootloader with fixmbr

If the Windows XP Bootloader gets erased or corrupted, you can repair it without a complete reinstall. Below describes how to do this.

Disclaimer: Attempt this at your own risk, I assume no responsibility for any data lost. You have been warned.

Boot from the Windows XP CDROM in to the “Recovery” prompt. If you have not set an Administrator password, leave it blank. The Windows XP documentation (Help and Support) has a section on the Recovery Console if you’d like to learn more. Also, it’s always worth running a command without any switches to see what the other options are, there is usually a help switch.

Then run:

bootcfg /rebuild
fixboot
fixmbr

Written by webmaster on October 19th, 2006 with comments disabled.
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