Hi I am going to start again with my whole system but one of the hard disks has got the boot sector all messed up is there a program, for windows or for Linux which will reset all of the original settings,, starting cylinder etc etc.

I can remove my drives and check out the serial numbers and make and model if this will help me or even contact the manufacturer.

Any Ideas,

Rob

It sounds like you are asking a BIOS question. Usually, setting the primary and secondary IDE channel masters/slaves to autodetect in BIOS resolves the problems. Cold reboot and press whatever key it says (e.g., F1, F2, DEL, ESC, etc.) to enter the BIOS setup and make the change.

If you are asking how to return the Master Boot Record (MBR) to the initial XP setup, boot using the XP installation disk and enter the recovery console (i.e., DOS by another name) and type “fixmbr”. Or boot using a Win95,98,ME Startup Disk and type “fdisk /mbr”.

If you want to fix the MBR for a boot loader (e.g., LILO or GRUB) setup, you will need to boot into linux and rerun the setup specific to the loader.