How can I restore the MBR for MS-DOS without having an MS-DOS boot disk or floppy drive. Ideally, I would like to be able to do this from a Windows 7 Win PE disk. The only solutions I've found online say to use fdisk or fixmbr but neither of those seem to come with Win PE.
3 Answers
fdisk /mbr is not documented but works also in MS-DOS 5.00 () Tried today, and yes me too I have some DOS machines in production. Other tools @ .
3Naturally, things can go even more haywire: the first thing you should do is make sure any critical data is backed up. If this is a production machine, then it should be worth making a disk image if needed (of the hard drive). Mucking with boot stuff can easily result in disasters, like looking the partition table, which can be much more difficult to fix.
That's not to say that I'm lacking confidence in my advice. I could follow it without problem. But tools that muck with this part of the disk are often tools that are capable of causing major data loss if they are used improperly. Backups should be done anyway for critical business data, on a regular basis. Well, that's even more important before trying any programs like what I am about to suggest, or other software that I've seen other people suggest in this SuperUser question.
If using Windows PE is causing too much aggravation, you can forget about using tools that come with Windows. There are other options available for you.
If you need to boot DOS, all you need is an MBR that can load DOS.
Boot managers can also do what you seek, and they may be installable from different operating systems (or even different computers). Consider using any operating system to make a disk (CD, or floppy) that uses GAG, and then GAG can boot DOS. Also, GAG can install itself onto the hard drive, so then the machine can directly boot the DOS machine. GAG doesn't come with Windows PE or any other operating system; it doe snot use Windows PE or any other operating system. It's meant to be started from the MBR, and it will take care of what you're describing you want to do.
Or use XFDisk which is available separately but also comes with FreeDOS. That has a boot manager that will fit entirely within the MBR. Ranish Partition Boot Manager may be another option.
DOS MBR work same as WIN7 MBR. MS MBR have only one task- find Active partiotion and "chainload" it BootSector. You need fix BootSector by DOS, as I know you need SYS command
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