BootMGR Missing, Win7 Refuses to see installation

Xirix · 12 May 2014

So I've screwed something up, I recently installed a new HDD and noticed in Computer Management that my OS drive wasn't marked as active, one of my storage ones was.. so I marked C as active, now the computer won't boot.

I'm getting the BootMGR is Missing message, I tried repairing with Windows 7 CD.. it popped up and told me there's a problem with booting and should I restart to fix it, I said yes, it restarts, same error.

Now when I use the CD, and even made a recovery DVD with another Windows 7 machine to make sure... it says the system recovery options aren't compatible with my version, which it now refers to as "Windows 7 Ultimate (Recovered)"

I tried doing the /fixmbr commands and such after finally being able to get into command prompt, but when I tell it to rebuildbcd it detects 0 installations of Windows...

BJB · 12 May 2014

Many Win 7 installations have a 100MB partition before the Windows partition and, where it exists, that is the partition that has to have the Active flag. You need to open Disk Management in order to see the partition as it has no drive letter and doesn't appear in Computer. Right click the partition in Disk Management to set as Active.

EDIT - ignore that, you can't do it that way if you can't boot. However you could use the Minitool Partition Wizard boot disk to check what partitions exist and, if the 100MB partition does exist, use the Explore feature to check for bootmgr, the file that kick starts Windows. If found then set the partition Active.

Partition Wizard Bootable CD allows user to manage partition directly with partition manager bootable CD.

cyanna · 12 May 2014

I suggest you should try and figure out what exactly it is that the repair environment sees. Boot from whichever recovery device you can and just access the command prompt. Then run diskpart followed by list volume.

This should give you a list of all the partitions with their size and whether they are system, boot, none of these..