Member Avatar for valuum

Hey all,

i recently ran DBAN (using the autonuke function) to wipe my dads old business laptop, and now have a big problem.... There is a cd drive attachment for this laptop, and everytime i try to reinstall windows 2000 (its an old computer), the following error appears:

"No boot sector on hard disk - No bootable devices - press F1 to retry, F2 to go to options"

:-O wat do i DO?!?! how do i get this thing up and running again? i am also running DBAN on another of my computers which is much newer, will the same thing happen?

I surfed a bit and came across a bunch of stuff about MS-DOS boot disks and an FDISK function or something, but how would i use these things? i also dont have the option of running anything from a floppy disk.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated,

Jon

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Dani AI

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Nice that got the machine booting again and that and pointed you toward boot media and repair — below are concise, practical notes to help if this happens again or if repairing the MBR alone does not restore a system.

When a drive is wiped you can lose three different things: the partition table, the master boot record (MBR), and the volume boot record / filesystem metadata. Which piece is damaged determines the recovery step:

  • If the MBR is corrupt, rewrite it (Windows 2000 uses the Recovery Console commands).
  • If the volume boot record or boot files are gone, write a fresh boot sector and restore boot files, then run a filesystem check.
  • If partitions themselves were removed, you must recover the partition table before any boot repairs will help.

Tools and quick sequence to try on a Windows 2000-era box

  • Boot from a Windows installation CD and enter the Recovery Console. Run, in order, fixmbr, then fixboot, then chkdsk /r. If boot.ini is missing, use bootcfg /rebuild.
  • If the partition table is gone or Windows tools don’t see the filesystem, use a partition-recovery utility such as TestDisk to scan for old partitions, verify files (use the file-listing feature), and write the recovered table back to disk.
  • If data is important, image the disk first (use dd or a cloning tool from a Linux live CD) and work from the image.

Preventive advice

  • Make a bootable rescue USB/CD before doing destructive wipes so you can reinstall or repair immediately.
  • Verify install media is valid and licensed — bad or incompatible media can block reinstall.
  • When using secure-wipe tools, confirm you have backups and a verified recovery plan.

If recovery steps fail and data matters, stop writing to the disk and consider a specialist or a full disk image for offline analysis.

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Member Avatar for caperjack

have a look around www.bootdisk.com and you should fine file and info for creating a boot disk[cd] for when you have no floppy drive ,and just do a search for fdisk and how to use its command to create a new bootable partition on the drive

Member Avatar for gerbil

And because you saw this msg :
"No boot sector on hard disk - No bootable devices - press F1 to retry, F2 to go to options" - you were not actually booting from the cd. DBAN obviously wiped the disk but left the MBR intact, so the code from that has been loaded, but then it cannot locate the boot sector on the hdd... cos you wiped it. Anyway.. that is wot it is telling you. Reset your boot order using the F8 key at startup [F2?, or whatever key combo BIOS tells you to use] to set your cd as first boot device.

Member Avatar for valuum

aaahhhhh. i got it. fixed the mbr and it boots fine now. also didnt work because my copy of windows 2000 is apparently pirated :P thx guys

Member Avatar for gerbil

Er... right. Glad you are sorted re the MBR, anyway.

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