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#1
Bootmgr.exe missing... mpio.sys missing or corrupted. Unable to boot
I just got a computer for free, a Dell Studio 1555. When I got it, it would try to boot, then come to a screen that said that bootmgr.exe was missing. Sometimes I got a message that said something like mpio.sys was corrupted or missing. I have a Win 7 disk, so I put it in and tried to repair the installation. Each time I ran it, it said that the repair had failed. I tried to reinstall windows 7, and It made it to the first restart in the process. It showed the "Starting Windows" screen, but the colors of the windows logo never appeared, then I got the missing bootmgr screen. I decided to install Ubuntu and see if that worked, and it did (I installed it alongside the Windows installation). It was Ubuntu 10.04. I thought, "OK, so i'll just use this as a Linux machine"...and I decided to go back and reinstall so that I could use the entire hard drive. It never worked correctly again. Each subsequent time that I installed Ubuntu, I was told something along the lines of "Gnome Power Manager did not install correctly" and got a slow and choppy Ubuntu installation. Tried to install 11.10, and it failed completely. I opened the Ubuntu live from my usb drive, and opened the disk utility. I now cannot format, reformat, partition, or delete partitions on the drive. Is all of this just a case of a hard drive on its last legs, or is there something else going on here?
Thanks in advance for any help.