XP recovery disc to fix MBR?

I would like to virtualize my old laptop's XP partitition on my T500 using the Windows 7 Virtual PC application. One problem is that it was a dual-boot system with Ubuntu, and I am getting a GRUB Error 17 sugesting that the MBR needs to get fixed. My T500 (Win 7) came with a 3 disc XP Rescue and Recovery set, and I am wondering if and how I could use this set to fix the MBR of an XP system that resides on an external hard drive.

 

You would need to "connect" the CD-ROM to Virtual PC, and boot off from it at the time the guest operating system started up. You'd go into the Recovery Console and use the following commands:

FIXBOOT
FIXMBR

Warning: The above will wipe and replace your boot record and master boot sector; make sure you're backed up before doing it.

I haven't done this on Virtual PC. I found VPC to be sluggish and inefficient compared to VMWare Workstation, so I stopped using it. However, either in the Guest OS settings, or by pressing a function key at startup of the VM, you should be able to set the CD-ROM as your primary boot source. I have done this in VMWare Workstation and it worked just fine.

I'm not sure your Rescue-and-Recovery set will do what you need; I'd use an XP Operating System CD to do it. Also, I haven't done any capturing of systems as a .VHD for use in VPC, but I do know that VMWare Converter can capture a system as an image usable by VMWare Player or VMWare Workstation.