MBR for Inspiron 6400

[Curious.George]

Anyone have a copy of the (original factory install) MBR for an Inspiron 6400? It's a colossal waste of my time to recreate it by reverse engineering the various recovery disks involved.

[No, there isn't a pushbutton way of restoring it]

[goontron]

Re: MBR for Inspiron 6400

Ha. Well, isn't that something. If you had posted this this morning i could have dumped one for you. I just got done blowing away a 6400 and installing BSD.

IIRC, get ahold of a restore disk. It should remake the MBR.

[Curious.George]

Re: MBR for Inspiron 6400

Ha. Well, isn't that something. If you had posted this this morning i could have dumped one for you. I just got done blowing away a 6400 and installing BSD.

IIRC, get ahold of a restore disk. It should remake the MBR.

I've a complete set of restore disks (actually, a couple of sets!). But, like most, it doesn't properly rebuild all of the partitions on the disk. For the 6400 (and probably other similar devices), there are 4 partitions on a factory install.

I've come across many 6400's headed for the tip -- but invariably they have their disk caddies removed (so I can't look at the drive... even hoping it is "virgin")

I can piece together what is likely in the original MBR (actually, I suspect it's more than just the MBR... maybe the whole first track?) but it'll be a "project" and not something I'll be able to knock off in 30 minutes (like I could if I had a factory image)

[goontron]

Re: MBR for Inspiron 6400

^ Damn. That sucks a bit.

[Curious.George]

Re: MBR for Inspiron 6400

^ Damn. That sucks a bit.

<shrug> It's unfortunate as I had built (configured) half a dozen of these for a local charity and, thus, had at least six opportunities to grab a complete factory image before I delivered them. At the time, I didn't have one for myself so saw no need to preserve that information!

[No matter how much cruft I manage to squirrel away, there always seems to be something that I didn't -- that I later regret! ]