How to Remove a Master Boot Record

The Master Boot Record or MBR contains important data that the computer uses to properly boot your installed operating system. Freshly formatted hard drives do not have a Master Boot Record but the operating system writes the appropriate data after you successfully set it up. You cannot load your operating system even if the files are physically present if a virus or hard disk problem corrupts the MBR. Third-party programs are available to repair the MBR, but you should remove the Master Boot Record if the repair fails so you can later have these tools rebuild the MBR.

• 1

  Use Super Fdisk to remove the Master Boot Record and manage your partitions from a single interface. Super Fdisk refers to this feature as "Erase MBR" which will delete every partition in the hard disk.

• 2

  Download and run MBRWiz from the command line to instantly wipe the MBR. MBRWiz is a commercial software that comes with boot record repair and backup tools. You can use the "/Wipe" parameter to remove the MBR.

• 3

  Launch MBR Utility to see various actions that you can take on your MBR. One of the options include the "/ZERO" parameter which will set the Master Boot Record to zero. MBR Utility deletes all of the partitions as a result. It also provides options to install standard and Windows 7 MBR code.