Linux Mint Forums

When I installed LMDE, it behaved nicely for a while, but then my MBR apparently got trashed - was unable to boot to LMDE or WinXP Pro. Fatal bug for me, as I use Windows in daily work. (Because Open Orifice, while stable and lovely for many things, does not format even mildly complex Word docs correctly, and the Track Changes feature is fatally flawed - but don't get me started.)

Just wondering if anyone else has had a similar issue, as I would like to give LMDE another try. Haven't found anything like this problem discussed elsewhere in this forum.

Absolutely never had this.
Grub is installed to the MBR, but why would it trash it.
I suggest you post some info that we can use to work through the problem.

Some times some windows programs can damage grub2 installation on MBR.
Maybe this is what happened to you. Here is something about it.
http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wiki/WindowsErasesGrub

If this is your problem it is pretty hard to track down what windows program is causing this(usually anti-virus or manufacturer software like dell or hp custom software pre-built in the shipped windows. Or any other bad behavior program). Google could help, but you would need a lot of time to spend with it.
I don't use windows much, and when I do, sometimes it damages grub, so my fix is simple.
So I burned a SGB disk and always keep it in hand. Once the MBR is messed up all I have to do is boot the SGB disk and boot into lmde then do a it doesn't take more than 5 minutes to do all that and its a pretty easy process.
The ISO for SGB can be found at: http://www.supergrubdisk.org/
Make sure you get the SGB2 if you are using grub2(LMDE default)

When you boot from SGB CD you will see a grub-like menu that will let you find (almost)any system installed on your machine.

If you have any problem you can join their channel at IRC( #sgrub at freenode), they were really helpful when I needed.

Like caf4926 said its hard to know what the problem is from what you told, what I told is a fix that should work in almost any case of MBR overwriting problem. Anyway good luck.

Hi!
There are at least 5 suggestions to restore MBR, one I had tested with success is the following:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 6&start=20
It's lauren's post from Fri Dec 03, 11:41.
seeley

Thanks for the help. I'm feeling more confident that if there's a recurrence I'll be able to fix it and keep using LMDE. This is all very helpful information, and much appreciated. Thanks again.

Lots of good reasons why Mint users just keep coming back...