I have a gateway laptop that will not boot. I booted from a windows 7 disk (created from a 7 iso download) and chose startup repair and of course it can't help. It says MBR missing. Is there a way to fix that? If so, is this how? MBR - Restore Windows 7 Master Boot Record . If not, any ideas?
You can try that. If you still have a problem then you can consider the Bootrec command
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/927392
You mentioned an iso download. You need to be sure that this was from a good source and matched the version of your Windows OS.
I ended up doing both and still had issue. Eventually I did a clean install. Then I was able to get it to boot. Started doing updates and installed a few. Then the more problems started. One here and one there. Ran a hard drive checker software and what do you know. The hard drive was bad. I replaced the hard drive (it was 5 years old on a laptop) and am on my way. Learned a lesson on this one. Will start running hard drive testing software more frequently and especially on drives older than say 3-4 years old.
HDDs do fail. Look at how they are going over time but.... Make System Images and you are unlikely to ever need a clean install again. A system image can be restored to your current drive in the event of a bad update, virus etc... You can also use it to restore to a new HDD if the old one fails. I suggest you start looking at (free) Macrium Reflect and save system images to an external HDD.
I recently used Macrium to do images. It works great. Its the best thing since sliced bread!!!! Although I don't make a living doing it, I do service PCs/Laptops here and there which gives me hands on experience and helps get me through college. The first thing I do is an image using Macrium prior to service just in case something goes wrong. This way I can put it back to original state and start over. I also use it to make images fo my computers and families computers as well. Just recently learned how to do it.
Also, thank you for the Bootrec command. I learn new things here all the time.
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