How to repair the master boot record (MBR of a hard drive manually (quicker)

1. Put your original Windows XP CD into the cd drive of your computer. Restart your computer and hopefully it will come up and say press any key to boot from the cd.
2. If this does not come up you need to enter your bios and change the boot order or sequence. See How to get into Your BIOS and change settings.
3. A blue screen will appear and you are on your way..
4. You may need to press F8 to agree to the Windows Setup agreement.
5. After that the setup options will appear (see screen shot below).
6. Do not press ENTER as it will start installing Windows from scratch and you will loose all of your data on your hard drive.
7. Press the letter R on your keyboard to enter the Recovery Console.
8. When Recovery Console starts you will have to enter the number that corresponds with the installation you want to repair. For example if you have only one Windows installed on your computer then you would press the number one key. If you have two operating systems on your computer and you want to repair the second one then press 2.
9. Enter your Administrator password for that windows installation. You must enter an admin password here and if you do not, you cannot continue.
10. At the Recovery Console command prompt, type fixmbr.
11. You will be asked to confirm that you want to do this by pressing the Y key for yes.
12. Now your Master Boot record will be fixed.