It says "... try another utility to attempt to restore your MBR." Can't I just rebuild it, or something?

Sure, try following the instructions in Joe5's suggestion.

Look forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

joe5's suggestion requires having a XP CD. I do not have and XP CD. Sony only gives you a set of CD's to reinstall your OS, not repair it.

Download the "xp quick boot disk" from the bootdisk.com link in my sig below , and start the recovery console with that.




1.Insert the Windows XP startup disk into the floppy disk drive, or insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.

Click to select any options that are required to start the computer from the CD-ROM drive if you are prompted.

2.When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.

3.If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you must access from the Recovery Console.

4.When you are prompted, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.

5.At the command prompt, type the appropriate commands to diagnose and repair your Windows XP installation.

(the instructions in the link posted above)

I made the bootable CD and it worked to boot to the recovery stuff that I wanted, but when I tried to fix the MBR, it said to couldn't be done because a back-up copy could not be created.

Hmm.. i think that either means that the HD is not usable anymore or completly full.. I hope one of the others has some ideas about this one.

Well, I was reading the help section of Norton GoBack and it said most start-up errors with itself just need a simple uninstall/reinstall. So I did what it said, uninstall and resinstall. When I started me computer after the uninstall, my new hard drive was missing and when I went to it with my partition program it said empty and unformated. Then I went to Symantec's website on the issue and it said not to have Norton GoBack enabled or installed during a new hard drive installation. It said a lot about being really bad and I was reading on the internet about others that had the same problem. Dang, I wish it would prompt your for something like that. Well, at least there is one good thing about all this; No more error on start-up! I just wished I would have added that 5 gigs worth of music on my iPod before I did anything! But who would have thought anything of it? Thanks for the help guys.