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#1
MBR Error 1 on startup
I’m having a major problem booting up my PC. I keep getting the error message “mbr error 1 Press any key to boot from floppy” every time I reboot my PC.
The PC is running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, and everything was working fine until I started to do some cleaning up in preparation for moving my OS from an existing HDD to a new SSD. My PC has a Gigabyte X58A-UD3r motherboard.
I cleaned up my files using Windows System Cleanup and also defragmented the C: drive. All of this seemed to go successfully. On rebooting my PC, and with the SSD installed in an external caddy connected via eSata (because I wanted to clone my existing C: drive across to it to avoid a new installation of Windows 7), I entered BIOS and changed the SATA from IDE to AHCI. (As far as I am aware I didn’t change anything else). Then I booted up the PC and got the error suggesting that there was mbr error 1 etc.
I turned off the PC and went back into BIOS and reset the SATA back to IDE, and rebooted. Same error. I tried rebooting a number of times – no success.
I then put my Windows 7 installation disc into the DVD drive and rebooted from the DVD (after selecting the DVD drive as the boot option in the BIOS startup). It seemed to boot up right into some version of Windows (note: it did not ask me if I wanted to install or repair windows; it just came up with a standard Windows 7 wallpaper and nothing else).
I rebooted again, with the Windows 7 disc in the DVD drive, but when it asked me if I wanted to boot from DVD, I just let it run – and it booted up my Windows as normal. But when I tried and reboot without the DVD in the drive and with the HDD boot option as the primary boot, it still gave me the mbr error.
So I booted once again with the Windows DVD, and created a Windows Repair Disc. I rebooted with this and attempted to carry out a MBR repair (using the CMD line: bootrec.exe /fixmbr – which indicated that it ran successfully). I rebooted the PC – still got the mbr error.
I rebooted with the repair disc again and ran: bootrec.exe /fixmbr, and bootrec.exe /fixboot, and bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd. They all seemed to run successfully – but on reboot I still got the mbr error.
I also downloaded and rebuilt the MBR using the MBR rebuild utility on Partition Wizard Mini Tool – it still hasn’t solved the problem.
I also tried to recover using a previous backup of my C: drive (one created yesterday before I did any clean up or defragmentation, but I am not sure if it had the MBR backed up) – it restored OK, but didn’t solve the error.
I also ran chkdsk on my C: drive – it suggested that the drive was clean with no errors.
So at the moment the only way I can boot up my PC is to have the Windows 7 installation disc in the DVD drive and have the DVD drive selected as the first boot device (even though I don’t subsequently press any button to boot from the DVD) – it just seems to force it to get around the mbr error somehow.
Can anybody suggest how I can resolve this issue ( as I am pulling out what little hair I have left trying to find a solution)?