Computer hangs at boot, please help me

Mitth · Post by **Mitth** » 2005-06-01 11:48pm

Argh. A few days ago, I needed more hard drive space on the 160 GB partition on my secondary hard drive. To solve this, I used PartitionMagic to delete the generally-useless linux partition on that hard drive that I had never got working.

Now, what didn't occur to me when I did this was that ever since I had installed linux, my computer would boot into linux and give me a screen at which I would go to windows. I hadn't rebooted my computer in a few days, but earlier I tried. Instead of booting into my windows 2k pro on the primary hard drive, it (presumably) looks for a linux partition that isn't there anymore. It also prints an irritating set of characters. It looks a little like this:
L 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 ... ad infinitum.

I have no idea what to do. I have the Ultimate Boot CD lying around, and I can boot into a million different things; presumably I can alter anything on my hard drive that needs to be altered. What I don't know is what exactly I have to do to fix this. I'd like to avoid completely reinstalling windows, and especially formatting my C drive; if possible. Can anyone help?

Post by **Beowulf** » 2005-06-02 12:03am

You need to repair the Master Boot Record.

Try the command "fdisk /mbr"

You do need the appropriate version of fdisk.

Mitth · Post by **Mitth** » 2005-06-02 12:28am

Beowulf, I love you. That worked wonderfully.

Quite honestly, I never would have figured that out on my own.

Thanks so much.