Problems with boot sector or no active partion is defined

got an old computer upgraded from 32 to 64 rms and from 2 to 6 hard drive guy installed windows on it. worked for the day at night turned it on and before wondowme screen turned on and after the information screen cme on message showed something about no operating system found turned it off and on would not work tookit back to the guy and he turned it on ws fine worked for about week turned it on yesterday and the message came on unplugged it from computer and plugged it but today when I turned it on it showed it again for a couple times did the same thing with the plug in the computer part and still would notstop showing message finaly unplugged it from wall and plugged it in again and it worked. What is that afraid to turn it off to get excact wording of of message but says ne sentence simple like no operating system or program system found please help

This question was answered on September 16, 2002. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

Hi:

problem: your master boot record doesn't match a certain value at a certain location the boot sector is invalid and the computer cannot boot.this error can also occur if there is no active partion defined in the partion table.These problems also might be attributed to improper hardware.

Possible solution:

1 start the computer by using an emergency boot disk.

2 use fdisk.exe(this will view the partions on the hard drive)

a run fdisk.exe from the ebd

b select option 4(display partion table)

3 if the partions are listed,make sure that the bootable partion is defined as active.

4 if there are no partions listed,use fdisk.exe to establish new partions and then use format.com to format the partion you want to boot from.(REMEMBER, THIS COMMAND will CAUSE YOU TO LOSE ANY DATA)

5.Run the sys command on the hard disk from the EBD disk.(Type a:\sys c:)

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Posted by Dan of Mesa Community College on September 16, 2002

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