Solved Boot manager missing

[compscienceguru]

Hello All,

sda has three partitions. sda1, sda2, sda3.

sda1 is the boot partition that windows creates.
sda2 is where Windows, program files etc are.
sda3 is for my personal data.

something happened to Windows boot manager. The system would not boot (blank screen with a blinking cursor). I ran the following:

bootsect /nt60 all /force
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd

Now I have the windows boot manager with an entry listed but it points to the wrong drive/partition. and /scanos does not pickup windows installation on sda2.
Help?

 

[Dude]

compscienceguru,

Look here

 

[Kaktussoft]

So pc is actually booting? It did find the ACTIVE partition, loaded its boosector and ran bootmgr. Now you see the win7 bootmenu.. correct?

You did the bootrec and bootsect commands after booting from win7 install/reapir DVD? Anyway... open that Command Prompt again.

bcdedit

post output (make camshot if possible)
bootrec/scanos didn't find anything .... most likely because its already there

 

[compscienceguru]

thank you for reply. When the PC boots, all I am presented with is a blinking cursor. No error message , nothing. This leads me to believe that the master boot record is present. Since I did not get "Missing Operating System" error that BIOS usually reports if MBR is not present.

The /scanOS option detected windows which is shown in the bcd (hence it is already added). But boot manager does not show nor load this bcd.

here is my bcdedit output

It points to C partition which is where Windows, Program files are stored. But I have sda1 which is the boot partition windows creates. That is not in the bcdedit output.

 

[gregrocker]

The drive letters may be different in WinRE or boot mode.

When Win7 will not boot first to boot into System Recovery Options Command Line to confirm the boot partition is still marked Active: Partition - Mark as Active (Method Two) ,

then run Startup Repair - Run up to 3 Separate Times until Win7 boots. All repair commands as well as many other tests and fixes are automated in Startup Repair.

If this fails everything else possible that can be done is here for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start

 

[compscienceguru]

Guys,
Ok I fixed the problem. No need to run startup repair multiple times. The problem was the disk identifier. For some reason when I changed the hard drive, running the bootrec /RebuildBCD would not replace the disk identifier. I put the old disk back and everything is back to normal using bootrec /RebuildBCD
I will just use gparted next time to do a disk clone. Ended up using two days on this stupid problem.
RebuildBCD should be update but I doubt that will ever happen (MS)

 

[gregrocker]

If you'll ask next time you'll not have to waste 2 days.

We use the modern tools and methods which work best with Win7 here, where most of the OS's fixes and workarounds were developed since before it was even released.

There's no reason to fumble with XP-era fixes when there are newer automated ones like Startup Repair or Partition Wizard which has helped us here with countless thousands of partitioning operations without a single failure.