Lost MBR

Hi all,
I've been running 7 Professional for a couple of weeks now, and all of a sudden it won't boot. All I've done is install a new hard drive as a data drive, and when I power up I get "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER". (Yes, the OS drive is still installed, see below). I've inserted the 7 install disc and tried several different repair suggestions I found online, including using the UI Startup Repair tool (which has, on 3 subsequent boots, claimed to have identified and repaired the same issue of no system partition found) and various command prompt methods. The installer will not acknowledge that I have any OS installed, but it will happily let me access the OS drive as C: via a command prompt. This is a bit of an emergency, is there some command to just create a new MBR?

Nope, didn't move the original one.

comdude85 said:

Hi all,
I've been running 7 Professional for a couple of weeks now, and all of a sudden it won't boot. All I've done is install a new hard drive as a data drive, and when I power up I get "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER". (Yes, the OS drive is still installed, see below). I've inserted the 7 install disc and tried several different repair suggestions I found online, including using the UI Startup Repair tool (which has, on 3 subsequent boots, claimed to have identified and repaired the same issue of no system partition found) and various command prompt methods. The installer will not acknowledge that I have any OS installed, but it will happily let me access the OS drive as C: via a command prompt. This is a bit of an emergency, is there some command to just create a new MBR?

There's nothing wrong with your system.

Only thing that happened is by putting in the other disk, the boot sequence changed.

Go in the BIOS, and change the first device to boot to the old drive.

Don't mess around with the W7 install, you might ruin it.

Good luck.

The BIOS boot sequence is correct, double checked that after I first saw the problem. What I don't get is how if bootrec.exe /scanos finds my OS install, how come bootrec.exe /fixmbr won't solve the problem... fixmbr has never let me down with other versions of Windows...

Several times in a row, the Startup Repair function has reported "The partition table does not have a valid System Partition." as the root cause, and claimed to have repaired it. It has not. I can't imagine what partition is missing since, as I said, I can see my data just fine from the command prompt.

comdude85 said:

The BIOS boot sequence is correct, double checked that after I first saw the problem. What I don't get is how if bootrec.exe /scanos finds my OS install, how come bootrec.exe /fixmbr won't solve the problem... fixmbr has never let me down with other versions of Windows...

Just a question.

You said you can go to the prompt, and you see C:\ right?

When you type dir and press enter, do you see the directories, like program files, and windows?

Yes, all of my data is there.

comdude85 said:

Yes, all of my data is there.

Did you install a new second disk or a used one?

Brand new, unformatted.