Assuming the safeboot file was moved somewhere on the disk and the MBR doesn't know where it is you
may want to consider the following.
There are disk editors out there (i.e. Acronis Disk Director) or free ones which allow one to do a raw edit
of the disk track by track and sector by sector. The data could be displayed in raw mode or hex mode.
Thus, one starts at location zero where the MBR is at to find out where it thinks the disk drive sector location
is for the safeboot file. Then reading the directory structures, one locates the safeboot file and reads the
starting disk location of where it currently is at. Now that one knows the current location, one can modify
the MBR data entry with this new location so that when you save and exit it will now know were to go.
A Problem with the above method.
Because the drive is encrypted, the raw data that you see in the editor will also will be scrambled/encrypted
and perhaps the data too for the MBR. Hence the above method will not work for encrypted drives,
but only for those that don't have it which then makes the safeboot file problem not a problem since one
wouldn't have it installed if the disk wasn't encrypted.
Maybe another way is to,
a). bootup a second disk that has it's operating system encrypted with the same set of keys.
b ). since both the new bootable OS and the non-Bootable disk use the same set of keys, one could
(maybe) mount the non-bootable drive onto the good OS that was booted.
c). Since the same keys are used and maybe encrypted the same way, one could see all the files that
are important (i.e. company, personal files) and copy them off the mounted drive onto the good drive.
After this is done one could just unmount it since one has all the important data.
d). after doing this, one could just reformat the other bad drive or continue with the new one.
The above are some possible thoughts that may work, or the only recourse is the vendor to help out. ![:huh:]()
Note: Before doing any of the above, I would suggest imaging the bad drives data and saving it on another
drive. Do the playing around of the bad OS, and should it not work or you do something wrong, you'd still
have the copy of the original bad disk drive as a disk image which could be restored back to the drive
to keep playing around forever.