Fix MS-DOS MBR Without DOS Boot Disk

Question

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.

Solution

fdisk /mbr is not documented but works also in MS-DOS 5.00 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/69013) Tried today, and yes me too I have some DOS machines in production. Other tools @ http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm .

Comments

[ChrisInEdmonton]

Curious, are you really asking about MS-DOS? Do you actually have MS DOS installed on your computer, or are you just confused? Perhaps you are mistaking MS DOS with Windows command line tools?

[Ramhound]

Using fixmbr is the correct solution in a case like this.

[NikoKaranatsios]

@ChrisInEdmonton, yes. We have two production machines at work that still run MS-DOS.

[NikoKaranatsios]

-1 I mentioned fdisk in the post. It is not available in Win PE. I need a solution that works with Win PE.

[MasMarco]

From windows PE you can try BootSect.exe /help. On My version there is this: /mbr Updates the Master Boot Record without changing the partition table on sector 0 of the disk that contains the partition specified by SYS, ALL, or drive letter. When used with /nt52 option, the master boot record is compatible with operating systems older than Windows Vista . When used with the /nt60 option, the master boot record is compatible with Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 or later. NOT Tried. Can't assure it Works.

[MasMarco]

Another way I'm thinking is, supposing you start win PE from CD, you can always create a CD with boot image from BootDisk.com and use fdisk from there... If you need more info let me know.

[jpaugh]

Welcome to Super User! If the MBRs are really the same (which it is), then why would the OP need to use MS DOS to reset the MBR? Why wouldn't any Windows-based MBR tool work?