restore MBR without optical drive

I have a Thinkpad X61s and went to install a new operating system
(sidux). I tried to create an initial 1Mb partition, before partitioning
the drive, but my utility (cfdisk) wouldn't allow me to do it, and so I
went ahead and deleted the Vista partitions and created my own.

When I rebooted, I found that the grub bootloader wouldn't work. Initial
grub error was 25, which was not a problem with grub menu.lst (which
worked before), but access to HD, which I presume is because linux needs
to put kernel BIOS into some initial space (although isn't the first
unformated partition such a space)?

If I delete partitions, would that have deleted the MBR as well?

I tried to boot again, and this time got error 16, which I gather tells
me there's no MBR. So my problem is either to create some space at the
beginning of the drive or somehow to boot a system without the benefit
of an optical drive (which the X61s lacks).

I have an old NT installation disk. Can I copy some utilities from it
to a USB that would allow me to create a MBR space on the disk, perhaps
by deleting the partitions first? I have also have old DOS installation
disks; could I do something like that with them? Or OS/2 Warp, for that
matter. Or download a utility that can be put on the USB-stick?

--

Haines Brown, KB1GRM

Haines Brown wrote:
> I have a Thinkpad X61s and went to install a new operating system
> (sidux). I tried to create an initial 1Mb partition, before partitioning
> the drive, but my utility (cfdisk) wouldn't allow me to do it, and so I
> went ahead and deleted the Vista partitions and created my own.
>
> When I rebooted, I found that the grub bootloader wouldn't work. Initial
> grub error was 25, which was not a problem with grub menu.lst (which
> worked before), but access to HD, which I presume is because linux needs
> to put kernel BIOS into some initial space (although isn't the first
> unformated partition such a space)?
>
> If I delete partitions, would that have deleted the MBR as well?
>
> I tried to boot again, and this time got error 16, which I gather tells
> me there's no MBR. So my problem is either to create some space at the
> beginning of the drive or somehow to boot a system without the benefit
> of an optical drive (which the X61s lacks).
>
> I have an old NT installation disk. Can I copy some utilities from it
> to a USB that would allow me to create a MBR space on the disk, perhaps
> by deleting the partitions first? I have also have old DOS installation
> disks; could I do something like that with them? Or OS/2 Warp, for that
> matter. Or download a utility that can be put on the USB-stick?
>
Fdisk /mbr will restore the master boot record on the 1st hard disk.
For a fuller explanation see here.
http://www.computerhope.com/fdiskhlp.htm

Pen <nospam@nospam.com> writes:

> Haines Brown wrote:

>> So my problem is either to create some space at the
>> beginning of the drive or somehow to boot a system without the benefit
>> of an optical drive (which the X61s lacks).

> Fdisk /mbr will restore the master boot record on the 1st hard disk.
> For a fuller explanation see here.
> http://www.computerhope.com/fdiskhlp.htm

But how does one do fdisk if the install medium can't be booted? I
presume I can't just copy fdisk onto the usb-stick and execute it ;-)

--

Haines Brown, KB1GRM

In news:87ejaqqiob.fsf@teufel.hartford-hwp.com,
Haines Brown typed on Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:32:36 GMT:
> Pen <nospam@nospam.com> writes:
>
>> Haines Brown wrote:
>
>>> So my problem is either to create some space at the
>>> beginning of the drive or somehow to boot a system without the
>>> benefit of an optical drive (which the X61s lacks).
>
>> Fdisk /mbr will restore the master boot record on the 1st hard disk.
>> For a fuller explanation see here.
>> http://www.computerhope.com/fdiskhlp.htm
>
> But how does one do fdisk if the install medium can't be booted? I
> presume I can't just copy fdisk onto the usb-stick and execute it ;-)

There are free/shareware programs that can rebuild the MBR. But I don't
think there are any program within Windows that can do that anymore. And
they don't use FDISK.exe or FDISK.com anymore. I believe that ended with
the Windows 98SE and ME line. And the MBR isn't the same for different
Windows versions anyway.

With Windows and I assume Linux when you install the OS, it changes the
MBR anyway. Since you are going to do this anyway it sounds like. You
have nothing to worry about. If you are installing multiple OS, install
the older Windows first.

--
Bill

Haines Brown wrote:
> Pen <nospam@nospam.com> writes:
>
>> Haines Brown wrote:
>
>>> So my problem is either to create some space at the
>>> beginning of the drive or somehow to boot a system without the benefit
>>> of an optical drive (which the X61s lacks).
>
>> Fdisk /mbr will restore the master boot record on the 1st hard disk.
>> For a fuller explanation see here.
>> http://www.computerhope.com/fdiskhlp.htm
>
> But how does one do fdisk if the install medium can't be booted? I
> presume I can't just copy fdisk onto the usb-stick and execute it ;-)
>
Use a USB floppy drive.

"BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> writes:

> There are free/shareware programs that can rebuild the MBR. But I
> don't think there are any program within Windows that can do that
> anymore. And they don't use FDISK.exe or FDISK.com anymore. I believe
> that ended with the Windows 98SE and ME line. And the MBR isn't the
> same for different Windows versions anyway.

Thanks. I'm beginning to suspect my problem is not with a MBR, but
something else that prevents my boot loader from seeing the right files
or more likely the wrong drive directories.

> With Windows and I assume Linux when you install the OS, it changes
> the MBR anyway. Since you are going to do this anyway it sounds
> like. You have nothing to worry about. If you are installing multiple
> OS, install the older Windows first.

Again, thanks.

As for Pen's suggestion to buy a usb cdrom drive, I could do that,
although I'm trying to avoid an otherwise unnecessary expense.

--

Haines Brown, KB1GRM