loading PBR for descriptor 2...done

A few months back i got a brand new 640m. I have boot from cd-rom and xp professional disk and i have deleted all the partitions i could see and I have ceated 2 partitions: On the first (10gb) i have installed the xp-pro and the other partition kept if for data.

The media direct button was not working.

Just today i had the wise idea to repair my media direct..

So i have boot from the dell drivers+utilities cd (as per instructions), pressed Q and then i have done cd md2 and then press repair. Then...great i could use mediadirect...but when i exit and tried to enter windows i get the message:

"loading PBR for descriptor 2"

and that's it...stops.

Wheni run diagnostics after F12...it will pass everything and then it will actually start windows..i can see the bar..and then i will get the message "autochck program not found - skipping AUTOCHECK" and the it will reboot and i get the loading PBR message.

Now all i can do..is just boot from cd. Is it any way i can save my data..or even save my MS outlook folders?

The only option i think i have now is to try and repair the xp-pro via the cd, but i have done that, and i cannot see the xp partition.

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

There have been a lot of previous posts in this forum about that. You should not have deleted the DellUtility partition (the small 40-80 MB partition at the front of the disk) when you repartitioned.

The MediaDirect repair tool assumes every Dell system will have the DellUtility partition so it changes the partition type code of the first entry in the partition table to 'DE', and it assumes the second partition is XP so it changes it to be the 'active' partition. Thereafter, when you try to boot XP the MBR sees the second partition as 'active' and tries to boot it. If the second partition is your empty data partition, it of course doesn't boot and just hangs.

You'll need to either dump MD and use a generic MBR, or you'll need to repartition so you again have a small FAT partition at the front of the disk.

BTW, that's also why XP started when you tried to run diagnostics. Diagnostics is 'DE', so when you selected that from the F12 menu it saw the first partition was 'DE', thought it was the diagnostic partition and started booting it, but instead of the diagnostics program it was your XP.

 

ok...yes it looks like that happened.

The MD went and isntalled in my xp partition and boots from there.

Now i have:

Partition named -: that is my old xp partition 10gb
Partition named d: my data
Partition named c: which is unformated

Any idea if i can recover some of my data in the xp partition and mainly my MS outlook folders?

I have read somewhere about knoppix linux startup disk. Will i be able to see my xp partition if i cd boot in linux?

Also, before i do that is there any way i can dump MD and use a generic MBR to get my partition back as suggested above?

 

"before i do that is there any way i can dump MD and use a generic MBR to get my partition back as suggested above?"​

Yes, I think we should be able to get your XP back to booting normally, while leaving the MediaDirect partition abandoned. Instructions have to be followed carefully, so email me (dsrfix at goodells dot net) and I'll direct you to the tools you'll need and provide instructions. I'm assuming you don't have a floppy drive, so you'll need access to a CD burner and a USB thumb drive (which will only be used to transfer one file, so if you don't have one see if you can borrow one).

Dan Goodell