win7 boot menu points to missing drive. no entry for active drive.

the working computer won't boot now and i did it. i am to blame. i'm just trying to recover this for a relative to use...

yesterday - working configuration with linux on 1 ssd & win7 on hhd using windows boot menu. linux ssd removed and pc booted into win7 via boot menu.

today - needed to remove linux entry on boot menu. somehow wound up removing win7 entry & then setting boot time to 0. so computer now attempts to boot to non-existent linux ssd. there's no win7 rescue dvd & no boot thumb drive anywhere to be found.

i have a win10 box & can make a boot from thumb to get to the hdd. but how can i fix this pc without wiping it? will a win10 boot thumb drive fdisk /mbr do the trick on the hdd?

thanks so much.

jestre said:

there's no win7 rescue dvd & no boot thumb drive anywhere to be found.

You can download a clean/legit Win 7 ISO using the Heidoc ISO downloader:
Microsoft Windows and Office ISO Download Tool

Create a bootable disc/flash stick with the W7 ISO.
Then try to use that for repairs, etc.

I can't help with Linux issues, i only use Linux as a VM under Win 7.

Hi Jestre
if you have a W7 disc/usb.
Follow this tutorial
Bootrec.exe Tool - How to Use in Windows Recovery Environment

Roy

DavidE said:

You can download a clean/legit Win 7 ISO using the Heidoc ISO downloader:
Microsoft Windows and Office ISO Download Tool

Create a bootable disc/flash stick with the W7 ISO.
Then try to use that for repairs, etc.

I can't help with Linux issues, i only use Linux as a VM under Win 7.

torchwood said:

Hi Jestre
if you have a W7 disc/usb.
Follow this tutorial
Bootrec.exe Tool - How to Use in Windows Recovery Environment

Roy

thanks for the responses. love the multi-quote feature!

no problem in linux. never any linux problems.

the boot menu is pointing to a linux drive that is NOT there. the win7 drive is there but w/ no entry in the boot menu. so i can't get to it. i have NO win7 recovery or ISO. i have a win10 box that i can use to help resolve this issue. but i don't know if win10 loaded on usb or dvd will help w/ win7 restore. and i don't know if win10 can burn a win7 iso/repair?

the only thing wrong here is that i can't get past the windows boot menu. won't fdisk /mbr correct this if i can get to the hdd?

of course i can attach the win7 hdd to linux but don't know if linux can do mbr repair on the win7 hdd.

just found it. can you believe this? --> How to Repair MBR (Windows Boot Loader) From Ubuntu | UbuntuHandbook

:)

DavidE said:

You can download a clean/legit Win 7 ISO using the Heidoc ISO downloader:
Microsoft Windows and Office ISO Download Tool

Create a bootable disc/flash stick with the W7 ISO.
Then try to use that for repairs, etc.

there was NO joy in trying the repair. so i deleted both partitions on the hdd & attempted to use the download to reinstall win7. however it burps that no partition is present, even though a one is?

should this windows download do a full installation on a blank partition? i downloaded the legacy version since there was a notation that the 'non-legacy' didn't work for win7.

thanks.

You should be able to install Windows into unallocated space and Windows will create the partitions it needs.
If you install it into a partition i believe that partition needs to be a Primary partition.
Here are a couple of tutorials:
Clean Install Windows 7
Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

I don't know how Linux affects your installation.

i confess to being uninformed about win7, but i thought it was smart enough to install itself & configure itself. i remember the bad old days w/ autoexec.bat, config.sys, et al. i remember the boot.ini and how easy it was to correct problems like this one.

it seems to me that microsoft worsens and becomes far more manipulative and intrusive into the public's lives with their products. this is why i am an avid ubuntu linux user. the only shortcoming with linux is that it won't "really" run sketchup, which i need.

DavidE said:

You should be able to install Windows into unallocated space and Windows will create the partitions it needs.
If you install it into a partition i believe that partition needs to be a Primary partition.
Here are a couple of tutorials:
Clean Install Windows 7
Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

I don't know how Linux affects your installation.

thanks for the response.

the hp pentium d system was a dual drive - dual boot system & i mistakenly used windoze boot. had i used grub...

the linux ssd drive is in another computer with win10 on it now. its out of the picture.

i already gave up & installed ubuntu on the hp pentium d in far less time that i wasted on win7 & w/ no problems. but the kids really need a windoze computer.

i allocated the max drive size 240gb as disk0 when attempting to install it. are you saying i should NOT allocate the entire space to disk0?

it doesn't seem that the windoze installer has a provision for making a partition primary.

i don't really have any utilities for windoze but i can pull the drive & prepare it using gparted. but dang it i'm tired of fooling w/ windoze!

i don't have confidence that anything will work. do these heidoc downloads actually work? so much MS stuff is broken.

DavidE said:

You should be able to install Windows into unallocated space and Windows will create the partitions it needs.
If you install it into a partition i believe that partition needs to be a Primary partition.
Here are a couple of tutorials:
Clean Install Windows 7
Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

I don't know how Linux affects your installation.

wound up using the following to correct the problem.

Setup was unable to create a new system partition: Fix for Windows
bootsect – Guide for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10

the issue was that the system was unable to unlock the volume in order to make it 'active'? so i had to add the /force parameter in order to make it work (bootsect /nt60 c: /mbr /force)? wtf?

the entire point here is that the largest computer company in the USA and perhaps the world has an installation program that relies on the end user to install its software since the program 'bombs out' and can't do its job.

microsoft's legacy is built on 'broken promises' - stuff that doesn't work. and this is why i switched to an OS that doesn't have these problems - Linux.

anyway, thanks and this is closed.