Restore Windows MBR

Restore or Fix Windows MBR using Linux

After 30 days of running Linux on the Acer Aspire Timeline 5810TZ-4657, I realized the machine was more efficient running the OS it came with: Windows Vista .. Additionally, I wanted to put the laptop back into the market (sell it). Some chipsets were not fully supported in the Linux Kernel and became an uninteresting project to me.

Before the following procedure, I had ran the recovery software. Incidentally I had purchased the eRecovery CD set from Acer because I had lost some Windows files in the corse of resizing the existing NTFS partition. However, I didn't realize that there was a hidden partition just before the windows partition that held the eRecovery bootup and data to recover from. At boot time, hit ALT-F10 to run the hidden partition and recover the machine to its original state. One thing to note, is that the recovery procedure doesn't recover the original master boot record (mbr), so the following approach is what I took to recovering the MBR, thus totally recovering the ACER Aspire Timeline 5810TZ-4657 to its original, in package, box state.

1. Boot the Ubuntu Live CD.. CD Image file can be found here: www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
2. After burning the CD ISO, and booting from the CD to Ubuntu Desktop, verify an Internet connection is established (Network Manager Icon in upper bar, towards the right side)
3. Hit ALT-F2 to run: gnome-terminal
4. Run the following in the terminal:

wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/ms-sys/files/ms-sys%20development/2.1.3/ms-sys-2.1.3.tgz/download
tar -xzvf ms-sys-2.1.3.tgz
cd ms-sys-2.1.3/ 

5. On the Ubuntu Desktop, click in the upper menu bar: System -> Administration -> Software Sources.
6. Under "Ubuntu Software" Tab, check "Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)
7. Click "Close"
8. Click "Reload" and wait for the package lists to update from the net, and the window should close when done. Don't close it!
9. Back in the terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libgettext-ruby-util
make
sudo make install
sudo ms-sys --mbr /dev/sda
sudo reboot

10. That's it!