Fix Boot MBR in Windows 7

I use a dual boot laptop with Linux OS installed on SSD (Grub2 bootloader on a separate /boot partition) and Windows OS on HDD. All was fine up until recently, when my SSD crashed and stopped working. Completely.

The Problem

It’s been a year (read full 12 months) I had my OCZ Vertex 2 SSD running, and sooner or later it had to die. It’s not a secret that with some SSDs the lifespan ends up being less than a year, depending on the quality and the usage of the drive, therefore I’m glad mine lasted for such a fair amount of time.

So, since the bootloader was gone together with SSD, all I’ve got after booting my laptop was the reasonable error message: “Operating System not found”.

Fix MBR with Windows 7 DVD

While I wait for my SSD replacement to arrive, I’m going to fix an MBR for Windows to be able to load. The procedure is as simple as below.

Insert Windows 7 DVD and boot laptop from it. Click on “Repair your computer“, pick “Command Prompt” from options.

Enter the following commands one at a time:

> bootrec /fixmbr
> bootrec /fixboot

Restart the PC.

4 thoughts on “Fix Boot MBR in Windows 7

  1. My hard drive is dead …(Maxtor Diamond Max Plus9 120 gb)
    When I try reinstall mikrotik i have error
    could not read MBR : input/output error
    Fatall error : mke2fs failed
    What is expirience with mikrotik in this situation ?

  2. Tried to upgrade ubuntu 14.04 lts. Had windows 10 running on same partition. During ubuntu upgrade, system asked for restart and since then stuck up in grub rescue mode.
    ls gives unknown file system for except hd0,6 where it gives error: bad file name.
    ls (hd0,6)/ gives
    ./ ../ lost+found/ etc/ media/ bin/ boot/ dev/ home/ lib/ lib64/ mnt/ opt/ proc/ root/ run/ sbin/ srv/ sys/ tmp/ usr/ var/ vmlinuz initrd.img cdrom/ libnss3.so initrd.img.old vmlinuz.old

    Please, please…help…I need to get my laptop up and running ASAP.

    • Hi, I’m not sure I understand, can you clarify what you mean by saying that you have Windows 10 running on the same partition as Ubuntu? I think one would overwrite the other.

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