subject: Resolving MBR corruption in Windows 7 and performing Windows HDD recovery [print this page] Resolving MBR corruption in Windows 7 and performing Windows HDD recovery
MBR or (Master Boot Record) is the first sector of a hard disk which contains the main partition table and the boot loader program. It also stores information about the disk's manufacturer, serial number, number of clusters, number of sectors per cluster etc. The BIOS uses this sector to recognize the disk.
As this sector is the most critical part of the disk, it is a common target for various viruses and other malicious software. Other reasons for MBR corruption include improper system shutdown, power surge, human errors etc. This halts the booting process of the computer and results in system inaccessibility. To overcome the problem and recover all the lost data, you need to go for hard drive recovery through a reliable hard drive utility.
For instance, while starting your Windows 7-based computer, you may come across anyone of the following error messages:
"Missing Operating System"
OR
"Error Loading Operating System"
When you run startup repair tool to fix MBR corruption, it detects no problems.
Cause:
The above errors occur due to corruption of the Master Boot Record.
Moreover, you may have inserted a USB drive in your computer. The computer hardware recognizes this as the system partition. When you run the startup repair tool, it examines this drive in place of the actual system partition. The tool reports no problems as no MBR is detected.
This would make your system unbootable and prevent you from accessing the valuable hard drive data. You may use a backup to perform hard drive data recovery. However, if the backup is unavailable, follow the below mentioned resolution steps.
Resolution:
Try these steps to fix the problem and perform Windows hdd recovery-
First, remove the USB flash drive from the system.
Insert the Windows 7 bootable DVD in the CD/DVD ROM and restart the computer.
Press any key to boot from the DVD.
Choose language, time, currency, keyboard etc. and click 'Next'.
Select 'Repair your computer' option.
Choose the operating system you need to repair and click 'Next'.
Select Command prompt' in the System Recovery Options' dialog box.
At the command prompt, type Bootrec.exe' and press Enter.
If the problem still persists, you should free download data recovery software of a reputed company having expertise in the field of data recovery. These software offer a smart and safe solution to recover all the lost or deleted files, documents, folders, emails, databases etc. form your system.
Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is a professional utility that recovers all types of Windows files in any situation of data loss. It recovers data lost due to formatting and corruption of FAT, NTFS, and exFAT partitions.
