BOOTMGR is missing? Recovery not reading?

Hi all,

Recently a colleague of mine has unplugged their PC without shutting down first, they were at first unable to repair their PC and get back to Windows. They then formatted their hard drive and recovery partition. They then began to receive the "BOOTMGR is missing Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart" screen. I have begun working on their computer and have been unable to get it to work. I have gone into the BIOS and disabled all booting options except DVD/CD. When I put in the Windows 7 recovery disc, it says "Disk boot failure, Insert disk and press enter." I have looked at the recovery disc, which is new, and looking at the files on it there were bootmgr, boot < boot.sdi, bcd, bootfix.bin, and sources < boot.wim. I have a little bit of computer experience, but this seems to be too much for me to trial and error out.

In short, its not booting up from disc, and fails to read the windows 7 recovery DVD. Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thanks.

Elite Zero

If you formatted the HD there is no OS on it to repair. You need to install an OS. If the Recovery Disks won't run then you can try wiping the HD first to see if they will then boot and run. But you should do the superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 instead of recovering the factory bloatware which throttles and corrupts Win7.

Unplug all other HD's and peripherals,

Boot into BIOS setup, reset to defaults, save changes. If an EFI BIOS, enable Legacy BIOS or Compatibility Support Module, set DVD drive first to boot, HD second. Then set SATA controller to AHCI. Save changes and Exit.

Next boot into installer DVD or flash stick burned or written using tool and latest ISO for your licensed OS version here. How to Boot A Computer from CD or DVD - YouTube

At first installer screen Press Shift + F10 to open a Command Box, type:

DISKPART
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK 0 (after confirming Windows 7 target HD #)
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY SIZE=102400 (for 100gb partition, adjust as desired)
FORMAT FS=NTFS LABEL="WINDOWS 7"
ACTIVE
EXIT
EXIT

Next click Install Now, then Custom install to Clean Install Windows 7 to the partition you created. If it fails then report back at which step and the verbatim error message.

In addition read over these steps to understand the tools and methods which work best to get and maintain a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7. The steps are the same for retail.

After install you can adjust partition size or Create new partitions for data, etc. in Disk Mgmt.You are creating the partition here for the purpose of marking it Active which overcomes certain install failures.

It's confusing. I had to read it twice.

I apologize for the misunderstanding, I too am a bit confused. In all honesty, this was a parental issue lol. They dig and dig and dig, but forget that they need a ladder..... I will try out what you said, the computer is older, 2005, its an HP pavilion a1530n and they don't have the original discs with, so hopefully I can trial and error it back to normal, and maybe put some child proof settings, lol.

No need to apologize. We're here to help you.

Try the steps I gave earlier to install, then report back the results.

Once it's installed be sure to follow the steps in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7
to set it up perfectly. In addition we can help you with some Parental Controls, or just maintain the Admin account with a password and the others issued a standard User account won't be able to make changes without your permission.