True Image corrupted Vista MBR
After hours of searching and reading forum post after post and article after article I decided I might post here to see if I might find a solution.
As the title of the topic indicates this is an issue with my MBR and C:/ partition where my host OS (Vista 64 bit ultimate resides) I have read and tried all the fixes I can see to find online but my problem seems to be a slight variation of the typical "MBR ERROR 1" or "MBR ERROR 3".
Rig is as follows:
-Custom built Sager NP9280 laptop
-Core i7 950
-320GB seagate 2.5'' HDD
-8GB 1333 RAM
-Nvidia 280M graphics card
-External seagate 1TB disk
I recently upgraded from 09' true image to 2010 version. Installation went smoothly and I create a backup plan (ironically it has not backed up anything prior to running into this problem) I made the mistake (prior to reading these articles) of defragging my HDD and running some windows updates. I restarted my computer after the updates, computer went though POST and then through the boot order. When it tried to boot from the HDD I got "MBR ERROR 3" I went into the BIOS to make sure boot order etc. was configured correctly and then restarted my machine again. This time no error, it sits on the "Boot From AHCI CD-ROM:" but there is no disc so nothing happens.
I went back into my BIOS and now I do not even see my HDD listed in the device menu. Immediately I ran a Diagnostics boot disk to check the SMART status of my disk and validate there are no corrupted sectors or read/write errors....no trouble found, drive is "healthy" I then went to try and browse the file system of C: within the boot disc but nothing displays. *Note* at this point I CANNOT boot into windows nor do I have a boot menu to try safemode etc. I think its also worth mentioning that I have the HDD encrypted with "Truecrypt" and it has written itself to the MBR to prompt for a password to boot from the disc. I have never had a problem with the 09' acronis conflicting with this so I don't suspect this is the case now.
I then tried popping in the vista install disc and running the startup repair tool with no results, windows could not automatically repair the issue. Also when doing the statup repair there are NO installations to select from, I just have to press next to continue. I then tried running BOOTREC.EXE /FIXMBR /SCANOS etc. etc. but still it does not fix the problem...no surprise, the command is not being run off of C: its being run off of X: which is the disc. Next I tried using the acronis boot disc I created to see If I could enable the Acronis OS selector (F11 option) it is currently disabled and when I try to enable it, it gives me an error saying it could not be enabled.
I'm really at a loss here for what to try next. Because my drive is encrypted even if I did "clone" it to my external then wipe C using a low level formatting tool I would have no idea how to recover my data from the encrypted cloned disc image on the external (I'll have to research from truecrypts website) I'm hoping it doesn't come to this, after all the whole point of acronis was to prevent the hassle of disaster recovery (irony is priceless) I'm hoping someone here has a solution...
Regards
Have you tried booting to the TrueCrypt Recovery CD and repairing the MBR/Boot Loader? This CD should have been required when you encrypted the drive (at least the current 7 version requires it).
Did you try to activate the ASRM or T&D? Either of those could cause the MBR 3 error and corrupt the MBR due to the encryption.