Solved Dell E6220 Missing BootMGR issue

[RussWWFC]

For a few days I have been trying to install Windows 10 on my Dell E6220 laptop. I had a working copy of Windows 7 which was installed when I purchased from eBay

One of those steps I took when trying to get it to install was to change the 'active partition' to the main drive (previously it was on a smaller partition)

This appears to have corrupted or deleted BootMGR

The BIOS is locked down with a password, I am able to view settings, but not change them, despite contacting Dell for a password, the one they gave me did not help.

The machine does not have a DVD Drive, but it does have USB slots. However after burning Windows 10 images and Partition Wizard images with both Etcher and Rufus, the booting from USB fails. (when I used F12 for 'one time boot manager')

F8 key for recovery does nothing

I have a fully functional Windows 10 desktop so I could use that to repair the Dell if needed I guess

I also have a USB DVD drive on order, to see if that can be used for recovery

I'd like to get it sorted before that however, hence me asking on here

 

[torchwood]

Hi Russ,
Lets start with the Bios lockout.
If you are the >>original<< owner of this machine
Then YOU set the password, they are not shipped/delivered Bios password protected!
if not you will have to contact the previous owner.
If you updated to W10 and the comp was ACTIVATED you can download and reinstall W10 via USB.
If the EBAY purchased W7 was non-genuine the W10 install would therefor be NOT activated.
Installing W10 via usb DOES NOT require changing partition status, just let it install it will allocate the size that is empty unless you change it

The DVD drive is NOT required.

Roy

if you want to check the validity of the W7 purchase run this tool, copy/paste the output.
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=52012

 

[RussWWFC]

Thanks for your help, although I self diagnosed the problem with help from Dell Twitter

The issue was that the Bootable USB was formatted as FAT32 (by default) as opposed to NTFS

A proper format, using NTFS as the file system and it worked

Now have genuine Windows 10 which I purchased, installed on it