System with a non-standard or corrupt boot sector will not boot correctly after installation of SEE-FD

Products

• Endpoint Encryption

Issue/Introduction

After installing SEE, the system will not boot correctly after the pre-OS login screen,

Symptoms
After the pre-OS screen, an error such as "......read error while reading drive" is displayed.

Cause

Boot sector problems may occur because SEE-FD is not compatible with applications that modify the Master Boot Record (MBR) such as Lenovo (formerly IBM) Rescue and Recovery. This is because the SEE-FD needs to modify the MBR itself of the system in order to implement the pre-OS. These two modifications are not mutually compatible. It has been found that even if Lenovo R&R has been removed from the system, the MBR modifications that it made may not have been fully undone and installing SEE-FD will still provoke the boot issue as described above. Other applications that modify the MBR in a non-standard way may also provoke this issue, as well as MBR corruption that may occur for other reasons.

Resolution

There are a number of possible solutions to this issue, but they must be performed before SEE is installed. Any SEE encrypted systems already seeing this issue will need to be reset and reimaged. If it is installed, Lenovo R & R will also need to be removed, and any hidden partitions also. This may mean cloning the system.

Warning: these steps may have serious consequences if used on systems that have multiple partitions on the primary disk. This is because the MBR is being reset which will result in all partition information except the primary partition being lost.

1. The best solution is to reset the Master Boot Record using the "fixmbr" tool in Rescue Console mode of the OS (e.g. XP) installation CD. This should reset the MBR and keep all the secondary partition information intact. There is still a small risk to Secondary partitons that should be kept in mind.
2. A Second option would be to use the Symantec tool gdisk. Running "gdisk32 1 /mbr /z" has the advantage that it can be run from within Windows. However, it will reset the MBR completely and will not keep references to Secondary partitions on the disk. If there is only one partition on the disk, this method will work effectively.
3. A third possibility would be to use "Fdisk /mbr" to do this operation, but this also will only work if there is only one partition present on the disk, it can only be run from DOS, and it will replace the boot sector with a DOS boot sector so it is not recommended.