your mbr contains a list of your partitions, a flag on the active partition,
and a bit of code that locates the partition boot sector and the OS boot
loader. so, yes, any time you touch it, everything on your drive may
disappear. you can probably get it back, though.

your boot.ini says that XP is on the first partition of the first drive on
the first controller (ide channel).
is that correct? running fixboot _should_ have ensured that it is.

if so,

check in your cmos setup program to see if some sort of bios virus detection
is enabled. if it is, turn it off, (and leave it off) save, and try to
boot. if it works, fine; if not:

back up everything you need including the os partition. run the recovery
console and fixmbr. just because msft says something might happen doesn't
mean it will :) and you'll have your back up if it does. i hate to say
this, but fix the mbr by fixing the mbr by running fixmbr from the recovery
console.

in addition to boot.ini, windows needs ntldr and ntdetect.com to boot. all
in the root of the c: drive.
it's possible that one or both are missing or corrupt (although you usually
get an error message if they are). You can replace them with the
corresponding files from the i386 directory on your xp CD, or from whatever
service pack you have installed, which is what you should do if you have
installed a service pack. to get them out of the service pack executable,
open it with WinRar (winzip should work) and extract the two files. then
just copy them to the root of the c: drive. you may have to first remove
the read only attribute from the originals.

if none of this works, it is possible that the first sector of the drive is
damaged - though that seems unlikely, because if it were, damage would
probably show up elsewhere on the drive as well. but you can try running the
drive manufacturers diagnostic utility against the drive. if nothing else
has worked and the drive looks okay, as roby said, you could try
re-installing SBM - or some other boot manager, since it looks like you are
better off without SBM. there are lots of other boot managers.

good luck

Mike



"kawet" <audevdw@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1163792509.543472.175250@f16g2000cwb.googlegr oups.com...
my boot.ini:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

don't know if that helps...


kawet a écrit :

> Hi again,
> I tried the first solution, the console installed but then nothing
> happened, after booting the PC, I did not find anything in the menu as
> indicated.
> Then I tried the fixmbr, and I had a message that all my partitions
> might become unavailable so I cancelled the action. Is that really a
> possibility that everything becomes unavailable??
> I tried fixboot, it did something but I had the SBMK Bad again :-(
> and finally, I tried the repair installation and it did not help
> either... I am starting to desesperate!!!!!!
> anybody has an idea? in the meantime, I will be using google friend...
> thanks!!!
> kawet
>
> MF a écrit :
>
> > "kawet" <audevdw@gmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:1163705193.601122.130400@i42g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
> > Hi Roby,
> >
> > Thanks very much for your help! I actually would like to get rid of
> > that menu as I would like to delete my Me and Linux to get some place
> > back on the harddrive as I never use those 2! So your option to "to put
> > XP's boot thingy back in the mbr and have it provide the boot menu"
> > would be GREAT! Can anybody help with that?
> > Thanks a lot!!!
> > kawet
> >
> > You need to do the following running as the administrator.
> >
> > Boot XP with your floppy. put in your XP CD. Close the auto run menu.
> > go
> > to the command prompt and type X:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons.
> >
> > See if it installs. If it does, reboot normally and see if your boot
> > thingy
> > is repaired.
> >
> > If it is not repaired, boot from the XP CD. proceed as if going to
> > install,
> > then choose the option to repair (R) when it appears. choose Repair
> > Console
> > as the method of repair. when it comes up, at the prompt, type fixmbr
> >
> > If that doesn't do it, boot the CD as before. this time type fixboot.
> >
> > If that doesn't do it (it should) do a repair installation (inplace
> > upgrade:
> > Start the install process and tell it you want to upgrade and pick the
> > drive
> > XP is on) of XP. that should save your settings and fix the boot
> > problem.
> >
> > If nothing works, go to google and type fix mbr. Read. then type fix
> > boot.
> > read.
> >
> > Google is your friend.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Roby a écrit :
> > > Ah, the infamous "SMBK Bad!" message. Yes, that's from Smart Boot
> > > Manager.
> > > Apparently, it was installed on the master boot record of your hard
> > > drive,
> > > and the menu is SMB asking which boot loader you wish to load.
> > >
> > > Linux usually boots from either grub or lilo ... you most likely have
> > > one
> > > of these already in your linux install. Either can put up a boot menu
> > > that allows you to boot a selected o/s. For sure, the list includes
> > > linux, ME, DOS ... and probably XP as well. So one option is to
> > > install
> > > grub or lilo in the mbr and use it. The other option is to put XP's
> > > boot thingy back in the mbr and have it provide the boot menu. I
> > > don't
> > > do windows, but I'm sure there are others here who can help with this
> > > option. Option 3: download SBM and re-install it on the hard drive to
> > > restore things as they were before you broke the SMBK.
> > >
> > > So how would you like to proceed?
> > >
> > > Roby