Accidentally Delete the Active Partition Containing the MBR

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philgons

New Member
I have my hard drive partitioned into two parts. The first part had XP on it. The second has Vista on it. I transitioned everything on my XP over to my Vista and no longer needed the XP partition, so I deleted it. Ooops! I forgot that it was the active partition containing the all the boot information. Now when I turn on my computer, it can't find an OS. Is there a way to fix the problem easily without having to reinstall Vista on the partition I just deleted, reinstalling all my software, and moving all my files? Is there a way to set my Vista partition as the active partition that contains the MBR? How would I go about recreating the MBR on that partition? Thanks for any help you can offer!

Phil
 
I haven't used vista a lot in the recovery console mode, but I can only assume it runs a lot like windows xp does.

1) boot off your windows vista cd
2) Select recovery console
3) Select your windows installation (by default should be #1)
4) Type in your administrator password if you had the admin acct enabled
5) Run these commands

Code: 
bootcfg /rebuild
fixmbr
fixboot

this should rebuild and then rewrite the boot sector. Like I said, never used it in vista but have many times in XP, so use this hint at your own risk. Let us know if it pans out.
 
It's Working Fine Now

Thanks for the help. I actually didn't even have to use the commands you recommended. Before I wrote my original request, I had reinstalled Vista on the partition that I formatted. When I went home yesterday and booted from Vista into the repair mode, it automatically scanned for problems and found my other OS, adding it to the list. Very cool. I guess they've built in some features in Vista for stuff like this. Thanks for the help.

Phil
 
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