Fixboot Command (Recovery Console)

Learn to use the fixboot command in the Windows XP Recovery Console

By
Tim Fisher
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Tim Fisher
Senior Vice President & Group General Manager, Tech & Sustainability
  • Emporia State University

Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the SVP and General Manager of Lifewire.

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Updated on August 18, 2022

The fixboot command is a Recovery Console command that writes a new partition boot sector to the system partition that you specify.

Fixboot Command Availability

This command is only available from within the Recovery Console in Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Fixboot Command Syntax

fixboot (drive)

drive = This is the drive that a boot sector will be written to and will replace the system partition that you're currently logged on to. If no drive is specified, the boot sector will be written to the system partition that you're currently logged on to.

Fixboot Command Examples

Below is an example showing how to use the fixboot command.

Write the Boot Sector to C: 

fixboot c:
fixboot command in Windows Recovery Console

In this example, the boot sector is written to the partition that's currently labeled as the C: drive—most likely the partition you're currently logged on to. If that is the case, this command could be run without the c: option, as simply fixboot.

Related Commands

The bootcfg, fixmbr, and diskpart commands are often used with the fixboot command.

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