A Master Boot Record (MBR) is a 512-byte boot sector, which is the first sector in a partitioned storage device. When a system is started, the MBR is accessed first, and then processes are carried out. So, its well being is very essential for the health of the computer. However, sometimes the MBR gets corrupted thereby making the system inaccessible. In such cases, you should use in-house methods to recover Windows partition. If you are not able to fix the issue, then you should use a third-party Windows partition recovery software to recover partition.

Consider a scenario wherein you are using a Windows XP system. When you start the system, it fails to boot. An error message is displayed as a result, that could be either of the following messages:

  • Operating system not found.
  • Missing operating system.

You, then, start the computer from the Recovery Console mode to fix the errors. However, here as well you get an error message, that is:

“Setup did not find any hard drives installed on your computer.”

Cause:

There could be various reasons for this strange behavior of your system. They are:

  • The BIOS system is unable to detect the hard disk.
  • The hard disk is damaged and, thus, inaccessible.
  • The Sector 0 of the hard disk has a damaged master boot record. It is quite possible that it got damaged due to some third-party programs or disk corruption.
  • An incompatible partition is marked as active.
  • The partition having the MBR is not active.

Resolution:

To resolve this issue and recover partition, you should perform either of the following methods:

  • Contact hardware manufacturer: Contact your hardware manufacturer for the hard disk repair. However, it may further damage the hard disk, which may even result in data loss of your hard disk
  • Verify the BIOS settings: Check the BIOS settings of your system. Ensure that the settings are appropriate and the BIOS recognizes the hard disk.
  • Use Recovery Console: Run the Recovery Console to execute the fixmbr command. This command will repair the MBR of the active partition. Restart the system, it should run fine now.

However, if you are still facing the same error messages then you should use a third-party partition recovery software to recover Windows partition. Such partition recovery tools are read-only in nature that do not overwrite the existing data while scanning the storage media.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery software is a partition recovery software that recovers lost, formatted, or deleted data from inaccessible or corrupted file systems. It works well in FAT, NTFS, and exFAT file systems. This Windows partition recovery software is able to recover more than 185 different file types from various storage media. This partition recovery utility is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, and 2000.