Questions tagged [bootsector]
The bootsector is located on bootable disks such as hard drives, CDs and floppy disks. It is loaded by the BIOS and in turn loads the operating system. It is frequently a target for viruses.
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When executing INT 10h on a bare metal, does each letter correspond to a 0-1 matrix?
If we call the INT 10h and set its parameters via assembly language, and then compile this code into a binary and write it into the boot sector of the floppy disk, we can output a string on the bare ...
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HDD freezes Windows 10 when reading
My external hard drive (MAXTOR M3) run into issues lately.
At first I thought the MFT or boot sector got damaged somehow. Because the drive didn't show up at all, not even in the disk management. The ...
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Why the location for Partition entry in MBR doesn't contain partition entry?
I'm learning file system recently. wikipedia says the partition table is located at 0x01BE, but when I check my USB drive(NTFS) by a binary tool, there are some words there "Press Ctrl + Alt + ...
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Ubuntu Error: failure reading sector 0x100800 from 'hd0'
My laptop freezed, so I restarted my system manually, and ended with the Grub terminal. I tried running the ls command in Grub terminal and got the result as
grub> ls
(hd0) (hd0, gpt2) (hd0,gpt) ...
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How can I calculate CHS from the LBA?
I'm writing a bootsector, and for it I want to access a particular logical block address on a floppy disk. I have all the parameters of the disk, such as total sectors, sectors per track, head count, ...
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Does '/boot/efi' locate in Memory as ROM
I learned from the book Computer Science: An Overview
that boot loader resides on Memory
In a general-purpose computer, a program called the boot loader is perma-
nently stored in the machine’s ROM. ...
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Is the boot sector really just the beginning of a drive?
First, I am assuming that drives and/or partitions have a linear address from start to finish. This must be the case, or else programs like dd would not be able to function as a copying mechanism.
Is ...
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How to boot a bootable .bin file from a CD/DVD?
I have written a bootable program in assembly and compiled it into a .bin file.
This is a Boot sector program which works well in Virtual box where I have to manually put the program in the offset ...
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What is causing this bcdboot error in Windows 10?
I was doing the instructions at https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/239203/7125
When after doing "bcdboot e:\windows /v /s e:" I get this error:
BFSVC Error: SetNamedSecurityInfo failed! Error code = ...
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From what location are the 1st computer instructions available on boot up?
From what location are the 1st computer instructions available on boot up?
A. ROM BIOS
B. CPU
C. boot.ini
D. CONFIG.SYS
E. None of the above
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Check size of Bootimage in El Torito ISO
I checked the Hex code to know the information about the boot catelog sector, boot catelog entry...
I have obtained information such as Start LBA and Sector count of first entry in boot catelog but ...
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How would I know if a hard drive was jeopardized by a power surge?
I have a hard drive, from which I have rebuilt the MBR and Boot Sector. I was able to recover the data. My client's computer and data were easily visible prior to a power surge in the home. She would ...
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HDD Stopped Responding
I have an external 500GB hard drive containing a WD Scorpio Black, used all as one partition, encrypted with BitLocker and runs very well.
This morning I connected it to my PC, it asked for BitLocker ...
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Boot Signature - BIOS
I understand that the BIOS is in ROM, and the manufacturer "typically" designs it to point to the first sector of the "active" storage device's first sector or CHS (0,0,1)*physical and CHS (0,0,0)*...
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How to overwrite 0 sector under Windows XP?
Is there any built in Windows XP command or other utility which will let me overwrite sector 0, so the OS will be non-bootable?
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Why and when does a quick format to FAT32 write different structures to sector 0 on a USB flash drive?
Introduction: For a research project I am trying to write a bootloader to a USB flash drive. After some experimenting, I succeeded to do this. I would like to know how I can reproduce this.
What I ...
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Number of sectors in my sda1
After running bootinfoscript, I read on the log:
sda1: __________________________________________________________________________
File system: ntfs
Boot sector type: Windows XP: NTFS
Boot ...
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How to repair encrypted Windows partition in external harddrive?
I have a Windows 7 Professional on TrueCrypt encrypted hardrive (two partitons, encrypted as the whole drive).
The latest Windows update failed and afterwards the Windows didn't boot (blue screen of ...
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Unable to format drive to NTFS
I'm not sure what I did with my 16GB USB stick but now I won't be able to format it to NTFS anymore.
Tried to quick and full format it and I got this:
C:\Users\Home>format g: /q /fs:ntfs
Insert ...
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Does the fixmbr command repair the Master Boot Code only or it repairs the Master Partition Table, too?
I know there all kinds of programs out there that advertise fixing the MBR, especially Windows. The Master Boot Record consists of the Master Boot Code and the Master Partition Table, correct? But I ...
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Damaged hard disk - FAT32 - lost boot sector and root directory
I've got an external 640Gb HDD which has been badly treated (accidentally packed into a sea shipment container then left in storage for 9 months, probably had some extreme temperatures too). I'm ...
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What defines the signature of a bootsector?
I've attempted to simplify the question, by getting at the gist of the problem:
What exactly makes the "first sector" of a device the "bootsector?"
Is the bootsector a logical sector, a physical ...
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How can I access the data on this Seagate dying HDD?
It seems my main disk was dying and eventually, Windows displayed a message to immediately reboot into recovery, make a full backup and replace the HDD.
I turned the computer off and plugged the HDD ...
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Creating a bootable CD with custom boot sector
I was interested in learning how to create an operating system from scratch, and I found this guide: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~exr/lectures/opsys/10_11/lectures/os-dev.pdf.
At page 4 it is explained ...
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Using Win 7 bootsect tool
With bootsect.exe /nt** e: I assume, despite bootsect.exe help speaks of "master boot code", it is intended to apply the partition boostrap code to the partition identified by letter E:.
Given this, ...
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How do I fix a Windows XP bootloader error when BOOTCFG, FIXBOOT, and FIXMBR do nothing?
I recently replaced a faulty hard drive with two hard drives that I then raided (1) together and installed Windows XP on about a week ago. Since then, I have always received this error:
Windows could ...
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How to create windows 8 boot partition on drive that never had one?
So 3 months ago I built a PC, but had the opportunity to borrow an SSD from my place of employment. I originally installed windows 7 trial mode on that SSD, and then after a few weeks upgraded to ...
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Need to rebuild Boot sector and Partition table of a once Multiboot Disk manually converted to VMDK
I had a problem with an HD that was not in a Healthy State I was able to make a backup in time with Acronis Image Home.
The backup was partial, the original Disk had 4 partition (3 primary, bootable ...
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How can I zero out the boot code of a MBR?
I have two drives in my Windows system:
Drive 1, System and Boot.
Drive 2, data storage.
Some time previously, I had Windows installed on the second drive. Now that I have the current setup, I would ...
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Does NTFS (or any file system) support files outside of the partition?
So on my C: drive, there was a file called BOOTSECT.BAK. Not knowing what it is, I opened it up in HxD and the first 14 bytes were B \0 O \0 O \0 T \0 M \0 G \0 R \0 corresponding to the UTF-16LE ...
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Cannot access disk, partition table broken
I was so dumb, to turn of the power on my Readynas Ultra 4 when it was installing the disk (3TB WD Green), I had no time to wait for it as I was going to return it (It was to damn noisy) The disk ...
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Is it safe to overwrite LBA 2-2047
So back when I used WUBI before settling on using a VM, GRUB was installed (but I messed it up and had to reinstall everything (luckily I backed up)). That was back when I used Vista which starts at ...
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Recover Lost NTFS Partition With Corrupted Boot Sector
Is there a way to recover a lost NTFS partition with a corrupted boot sector ?
The backup boot sector is also corrupted. I know that the NTFS partition used to start in sector 551585791.
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Linux pass execution directly to Grub on reboot
Is it possible to have Linux, upon reboot, pass execution to Grub without actually rebooting and invoking the BIOS? I have a GPT hard disk that I nee dplugged it at startup but the BIOS refuses to ...
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Restoring MBR, partition table, and boot sector of memory card without data loss ("USBC")
Abstract
I have a FAT32 memory card that when inserted into a computer causes Windows to prompt to format it. The card is definitely not supposed to be blank and has a bunch of files on it.
Symptoms
...
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How can I recover a lost MBR/boot sector?
I had a VDI (VirtualBox Virtual Disk Image) with Ubuntu 11.10 (64bit, I think) installed on it. Earlier, while running a GParted live CD on my Virtual Machine to erase the partition table of another ...
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Why is it even possible to overwrite the boot sector
Why is it possible to overwrite the boot sector so trivially in Windows? I just had a little coding accident involving writing to a raw physical disk, and I messed up the arithmetic and ended up ...
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Changing which drive the boot sector is on
I ordered a pre-built computer from a custom computer manufacturer, but asked them to install an SSD and make it the primary drive (C:), with the hard drive that was formerly the primary drive to be ...
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Reinstalled Windows 7 on new HDD, installed Linux over previous Windows 7 on old HDD, how to dual boot?
I reinstalled Windows 7 on my new HDD, installed Linux over the previous Windows 7 on the old HDD. How do I dual boot?
It seems that I overrided the Windows bootsector in the original HDD that was ...
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How to restore bootloader or bootsector for Windows Vista?
I've restored NTFS containing Windows Vista. But the bootloader or bootsector got corrupted.
How can i detect what of them got corrupted?
How can i restore bootloader if it's corrupted?
How can i ...
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How to write a localized NTFS boot sector?
Little unknown fact: NTFS boot sectors come in different languages. They can say "BOOTMGR is missing" and "Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart", but they can also say the same thing in other languages. This ...
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How do I copy the boot sector from one computer to another?
I have a pair of identical computers. One of them stopped booting the other day (it gets past the BIOS screen then goes black). Booting from a USB recovery stick I've verified that the partition is ...