I was reinstalling XP when I accidentally deleted the MBR. It starts up fine, however when I have a cd in the drive or a USB device plugged in I get the message "no bootable partition in the table". I need to fix this since I want to keep myUSB printer and USB hub plugged into my pc at all times. I tried going into recovery console and replacing the HAL dll file (d:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows \system32" & received the message "this file could not be expanded". I also tried typing the command "FIXMBR" but still getting the "no bootable partition in the table" error message. Is there anything I can do to get the MBR partition back? If I have to do a new install how should I set the partitions up? Thanks

Try to run command prompt FixBoot first to get the new MBR on the HDD.

I was reinstalling XP when I accidentally deleted the MBR. It starts up fine, however when I have a cd in the drive or a USB device plugged in I get the message "no bootable partition in the table". I need to fix this since I want to keep myUSB printer and USB hub plugged into my pc at all times. I tried going into recovery console and replacing the HAL dll file (d:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows \system32" & received the message "this file could not be expanded". I also tried typing the command "FIXMBR" but still getting the "no bootable partition in the table" error message. Is there anything I can do to get the MBR partition back? If I have to do a new install how should I set the partitions up? Thanks I presume you are fully aware you have posted a question about XP in a Win 7 forum? That means you have posted in the wrong place! Windows XP forums are @ http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/windowsxpitpro