New
#1
Bootload problems following an experiment with iATKOS OSx86 install
I'm having boot problems that seem complicated - every help article I've found on the web seems to be missing something or is not working. Here are the details.
Lenovo ThinkPad T410 running Windows 7 professional 64 bit. The hard drive has 2 partitions, the C: OS partition where Windows 7 and all my files/apps/etc. live, and one called SYSTEM_DRV.
I had created a bootable USB with iATKOS OSx86 and tried to install it. The USB boot loader gives me a GUI menu that shows all my drives, and previously I had gone through the steps of creating an extra partition to play around with this, and I tried to install it on that partition, but the installation failed and so I decided to back out of the whole deal. But I guess it made some permanent changes to my system's default boot mechanism first.
So now, when I boot just off the hard drive, I am seeing "boot0:Error". From googling this I am finding this is related to the OSx86 stuff I was trying out, and so I believe it is saying "I'm trying to load this OSx86 you installed but can't find it." So, I think that OSx86 replacement bootloader still exists, and is failing to load any operating system. It is looking for one that doesn't exist, and won't load Windows either.
Fortunately, when I boot from that USB I still get the menu to choose which drive to boot from and if I choose SYSTEM_DRV, Windows 7 boots just fine. So I know not all is lost, it's just the default boot behavior is not correct. As a side note, I was surprised that I had to choose SYSTEM_DRV and not the drive Windows 7 is on, that's what I would expect and what I've experienced in the past. I don't know if this is a Lenovo thing, or Windows 7 thing, or what. Maybe this is significant, maybe not.
Some more information:
When I boot into a Windows 7 recovery disk and go to the command prompt and do "bootrec /fixmbr" it says it succeeded. But "bootrec /fixboot" gives an error "element not found". Same with "bootrec /rebuildbcd", it gets started, scans for operating systems and finds Windows 7, but eventually fails with "element not found".
When I go to System Configuration -> Boot tab, I see NO entries in the list of operating systems. And the buttons and checkboxes on that tab are active but non-functional.
So I am not dead in the water - I can still boot to Windows 7 using this bootable USB I made, but need to fix this.
Any ideas?