bootmgr is missing - tried everything, need help!

I am under no impressions of anything. My system ran perfectly fine and fast enough with the setup how I had it. The ssd is only 120gb so not big enough for os and other things. I appreciate your help but I dont need a patronising school kids telling off!

I will grab the screenshot now

Instead of taking offense when we correctly point out how wrong-headed not using your SSD for the OS is, why not ask for help in resolving your hesitations. This allows you to benefit from the advice of the top tech forums on the web which is why you came here, right?

I operate my Win7 on a 120gb SSD with room to spare. This is because like many others I link my User folders to the hard drive which doesn't result in any speed differential. User Folders - Change Default Location

The blue link shows how it is done technically, but simply put you copy your User folders to the hard drive, then rightclick each to Choose Properties, on Location tab click Move, browse to select the new HD folder location, and Apply. That User folder then resides on the HD. Confirm this and you can delete the contents of the C drive User folder.

Another method is to copy the User folders to HD, then rightclick each to add to the related Library - Include a Folder - Windows 7 Forums while setting that HD folder as the default for saving: Library - Set Save Folder - Windows 7 Help Forums. Once the HD folder appears in the library with all your files in it, delete the contents of C User folder but leave it in the Library so you can see if anything gets saved there and drag it to HD.

This gives you a lightning fast OS on SSD with adequate expanding storage on the HD. You can simultaneously back up and sync your files to your other computers using this free method to Sync, Backup and Store your Files to the Cloud with Skydrive - Windows 7 Forums

I told you how to repair Win7 to boot from the HD if that's what you want. It should not be booting from the SSD until you install it there as urged. If you do you would want to unplug the HD during the reinstall, delete all partitions on SSD using the drive options pictured in Steps 7/8 of Clean Install Windows 7

After install plug back in the HD and link the User folders you've stored there as given above. No need to copy then.

Here is the screenshot as promised

She can't boot Jack.

You have no Boot partition. Run the repairs exactly as given in post 10.

Thanks for your help everyone. I am away until Sunday now altho may get chance to do this late tonight.

So just to clarify.....unplug the ssd so only the windows os drive is connected, mark partition active (already is) run startup repair 3 times? I guess my windows os drive will have no boot files on at all.

Greg, I understand your points and I will look into this once I am back up and running. At this stage I just want to get it back booting!

If you're sure the OS is installed on the HD, then yes. It will write boot files to HD and make it bootable during up to 3 Startup Repairs with reboots in between each to check if it starts.

Afterwards plug back in HD to mark 100mb Inactive then delete it in Disk Mgmt. make sure in BIOS setup HD remains set to boot first. Partition - Mark as Inactive

Just tried and it wont work.

I click repair your computer option, it scans for windows and finds 'windows 7 ultimate (recovered)' on partition c:. When I select it and click next I get 'this version of system recovery options is not compatible with your version of windows.....' message. I click cancel and navigate through to the start up repair screen. Run that and it fails citing problem signature 05 external media problem signature 07 missingbootmanager. If I click out of that to view the log I can see it has the root cause found as "missing or corrupt boot record'

Ther was a boot folder on the c: so I tried clearing that out to make sure it was starting from scratch but still the same problem. Any ideas?