Hi,
I use PLOP boot manager for dual-booting Windows XP and Windows 7 but sometimes the boot manager just goes nuts.
Symptoms- Black screen with blinking cursor, computer freezes, nothing happens.
- Black screen with blinking cursor, but I'm able to bring up the menu pressing ESC. The menu is empty, totally missing all of my boot profiles, the screen looks like it was displaying only odd or even rows, black bars appear. If I manage to navigate to boot manager settings, it shows random characters at values for options that have a text-based value.
The second one happens more often. It occurs after doing a clean shutdown/restart from Windows XP. I suppose that some overwrite or corruption occurs to the boot manager. My partition table looks like this. I keep my boot manager in the MBR and the type of the partition table is legacy/BIOS/MBR (not GPT, no UEFI boot, etc.).
Partition table
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 32 GB 32 KB
Partition 2 Primary 32 GB 32 GB
Partition 3 Primary 413 GB 64 GB
First I suspected a boot virus but I scanned the whole system as a slave drive (using Kaspersky's live CD) and there were no hits at all. My second tip is that Windows XP, which resides on the first partition, would write something to the MBR (or somewhere between the MBR and the first partition) or some other area that affects PLOP.
Any idea or suggestion is appreciated. ;)
Hello,
Autodesk could make such troubles. Are you using Autodesk?
Best regards
Elmar
I don't use anything from Autodesk.
By the way, I have an SSD (Samsung 850 Pro 512GB). I read about MBR corruption issues at Crucial SSDs, however it has never been proven that it's the fault of the drive. Also on the contrary, this happened to me once when I used to have an HDD. I just reinstalled PLOP and didn't care too much because it didn't happen more times. Now today it's the third in this week when the MBR gets corrupt and I have to reinstall PLOP every time from a boot disk.
Elmar, could you please tell me how exactly Autodesk causes MBR corruption and why?
It might help me investigating the problem further and bring us closer to a solution.
Autodesk writes some license data to sector 5 or 6 (i can't remember exactly) which is used by the Plop Boot Manager.
Sounds interesting, thanks. What I'm going to do is to backup the very first sectors of my drive then, compare it when the next failure occurs. May bring me further to know what overwrites it.
Meanwhile I looked at Sector 5 and 6 but there were only some binary data. But I have found PLOP-related data at Sector 60 and Sector 61.
Content of Sector 60
Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F
0000007800 00 01 02 00 07 FE FF FF 40 00 00 00 D1 EA FF 03 .....þÿÿ@...Ñêÿ.
0000007810 00 FE FF FF 07 FE FF FF 18 EB FF 03 0A EB FF 03 .þÿÿ.þÿÿ.ëÿ..ëÿ.
0000007820 00 FE FF FF 07 FE FF FF 61 D6 FF 07 4F 3C 9E 33 .þÿÿ.þÿÿaÖÿ.O<ž3
0000007830 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007840 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007850 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007860 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007870 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007880 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007890 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
00000078A0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
00000078B0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
00000078C0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
00000078D0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
00000078E0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
00000078F0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007900 68 64 61 31 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 hda1.
0000007910 68 64 61 32 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 hda2.
0000007920 68 64 61 33 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 hda3.
0000007930 00 64 61 34 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 .da4.
0000007940 00 64 62 31 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 .db1.
0000007950 00 64 62 32 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 .db2.
0000007960 00 64 62 33 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 .db3.
0000007970 00 64 62 34 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 .db4.
0000007980 00 64 63 31 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 .dc1.
0000007990 00 64 63 32 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 .dc2.
00000079A0 00 64 63 33 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 .dc3.
00000079B0 00 64 63 34 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 .dc4.
00000079C0 00 64 64 31 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 .dd1.
00000079D0 00 64 64 32 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 .dd2.
00000079E0 00 64 64 33 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 .dd3.
00000079F0 00 64 64 34 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 .dd4.
Content of Sector 61
Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F
0000007A00 57 69 6E 20 58 50 20 28 33 32 2D 62 69 74 29 00 Win XP (32-bit).
0000007A10 57 69 6E 20 37 20 28 36 34 2D 62 69 74 29 20 20 Win 7 (64-bit)
0000007A20 00 73 20 68 61 72 64 64 69 73 6B 20 33 00 20 20 .s harddisk 3.
0000007A30 00 73 20 68 61 72 64 64 69 73 6B 20 34 00 20 20 .s harddisk 4.
0000007A40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007A50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007A60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007A70 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007A80 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007A90 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007AA0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007AB0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007AC0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007AD0 00 01 01 00 0C 0F FF FF 3F 00 00 00 51 37 77 00 ......ÿÿ?...Q7w.
0000007AE0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007AF0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007B00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007B10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007B20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007B30 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007B40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007B50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007B60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007B70 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007B80 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007B90 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007BA0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007BB0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007BC0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007BD0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007BE0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0000007BF0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
This must be my partition list and my boot profiles.
There are some binary data at sectors following these (62 and 63) but I can't really figure out where it belongs to. They follow almost the same pattern as Sector 5 and 6, however it's hard to compare them since they're binary and I don't exactly know how PLOP stores its information. The first sector of my filesystem is Sector 64, so it's really close to the PLOP-related data. Is it possible that PLOP tries to use sectors overlapping the filesystem on my first partition? What sectors are used other than 5, 6 (and 60 and 61)?
The Plop Boot Manager is using the sector 1 and the sectors from 3 to 63. The sectors 60 to 63 are used for data. The boot manager will not write to to a sector higher then 63.
Thanks.
Today I experienced the problem again. Then I managed to save the first 63 sectors from my disk. Reinstalled PLOP and did it again. So now I have two images, a working and a non-working one. I compared them. There were only minor differences at Sector 59 and 61 (at each sector only one byte differs).
What's more suspicious is that Sector 32 gets completely overwritten/replaced.
I Googled it and found some software called FlexNet that uses Sector 32 but I definitely do not have this on my system.
Any ideas?
The overwriting of sector 32 is definitely the reason why the boot manager stops working.
I think I found it. It's Adobe Photoshop that writes some computer-specific licensing information/signature to Sector 32. Now I experimented with it. Each time I start Photoshop, PLOP fails to start.
My question is that can I somehow relocate PLOP to a different sector group?
I would resize my first partition, make it start from Sector 2048, then place PLOP above Sector 64. There are too much tools out there that arbitrarily write to these first sectors (Autodesk, Flexnet, Adobe).
At the moment, there is no way to install to sector 64.
Isn't it possible to install plop to a dedicated partition?
Are there other installation options that don't require a separate boot disk?
You can use it as secondary boot manager. Then it is stored on a partition and will be started by another boot manager. There are some features disabled in this mode.
Do you have some HowTo's about this?
It would be fine to put PLOP to a partition and install an MBR with the only purpose and capability to load PLOP.
How do I install PLOP to a partition and what would you recommend into MBR?
I still couldn't find a good solution.
I would like to create a boot partition and install PLOP there. Could you please recommend me a boot manager that is as simple/small as starts PLOP on the first partition (and doesn't have any pre-loading overhead)?
Also, how can I install PLOP onto a partition? Found no references in the documentation (https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/thebootmanager.html).