In news:h26mmp$gph$1@news.motzarella.org,
Barry Watzman typed on Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:05:45 -0400:
> There is no MBR at all on a brand new hard drive. In the absence of
> any MBR, all Microsoft OS installation setup programs (and this goes
> back to MS-DOS) will create one. And in that situation you have a
> reasonable assurance that if the hardware is not defective, the MBR
> won't be corrupt (note, defective hardware other than the drive or
> drive port can result in drive corruption .... defective memory, for
> example).

Lots of programs can and do change and modify the MBR. EAZ-FIX, GoBack,
and multiple boot loaders just to name a few. And once they change it,
changing back to the standard MBR will likely break something.

--
Bill
Windows XP Pro SP2 (5.1.2600)
Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC