Well I spend a week solving the boot problem in my PC. I am not an expert but what I learn is that You have to put the first two sectors of the hard disk into the file. After doing this you will know where you are. Use dd when you start from any linux live-CD and place any 8 GB empty but formatted flash memory in USB to put your files into. I believe You will enjoy reading the hexadecimal codes but you can also placed it for others to help you read it.
You are not risking anything when you run the dd correctly.