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Old 02-08-2005, 12:52 PM   #1
Hungry ghost
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Unhappy Need help fixing the partition table


HI. I'm running a machine with 2 hard drives. I had previously installed Windows XP and SuSE 9.0 in the first HD. Everything was OK. Then I decided to try Fedora Core 3, and installed it in the second drive. When installing, Fedora overwrote SuSE's Grub, so I reinstalled it and configured it to boot Fedora besides win XP and SuSE. The problem is, after that I can't boot windows, so I decided to reinstall it, but the installation program hangs up after the message: "Detecting your hardware". I tried booting a Hiren's boot cd which has a lot of HD tools, but it hangs up after chosing "Boot Hiren's CD" in the first screen. I brought the HD to a friend's and he somehow managed to boot Hiren's boot cd (maybe it was another version) and formated the entire hard drive. I thought the problem would be solved, but it's still the same. I guess there's a problem with the partition table, since after that, I can install and run linux on this HD, but not Windows. Does anyone know about some way to fix the problem and install win xp again? (No matter if I have to lose all the information on this HD).
Thanks in advance.
 
Old 02-08-2005, 12:55 PM   #2
Matir
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Try, under any linux,
Code:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/HARDDRIVE bs=512 count=1
This will zero out both the MBR and the partition table.
 
Old 02-08-2005, 01:52 PM   #3
Hungry ghost
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In the command you posted, shall I substitute "/dev/HARDDRIVE" for "/dev/hda"? (/dev/hda is the wrong HD) Or should I execute it right as yoy say??
Thanks in advance.
 
  


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