Restore Windows 7 MBR

By | 13 Jul 2010

If you installed Windows XP after Windows 7, you’re left with the XP-MBR on your drive and thus only XP is booting.

If you happen to have hardware, which produces the Code 5 error upon trying to boot from the Win7-DVD, you can do the following to restore the Win7-MBR from within XP:

  1. boot into XP and insert the Win7-DVD
  2. open a Command Prompt
  3. navigate to the ?:\boot\ directory of the Win7-DVD (with ? being the letter of your DVD drive)
  4. run the following command: (with C: being the drive where Windows 7 is installed)
    bootsect.exe /nt60 C: /mbr
  5. reboot and use EasyBCD to add Windows XP to the Win7-Bootloader

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To respond on your own website, enter the URL of your response which should contain a link to this post's permalink URL. Your response will then appear (possibly after moderation) on this page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post's URL again. (Find out more about Webmentions.)