Need to move MBR, running into Bootmgr missing error

[sstowell]

I have what I hope is a nice clean Windows 7 install on a fairly new hard drive (C from earlier this year. But I recently determined that the MasterBootRec is still on a tiny old otherwise empty hard drive (QI need to remove.

I tried following these instructions to move the MBR; I made my C: partition Active, in the BIOS moved this drive to the first boot position, then threw salt over my left shoulder, stood on one foot, and used my Repair Disk to run the system repair 3 times (per a Win7 tutorial).

No luck, just a BootMGR missing error msg on restart w/o the CD.

Next I followed another tutorial for fixing the BootMGR using the repair CD cmd prompt & 3 bootrec commands run on C:, the last being "bootrec /RebuildBcd" upon which I got "completed successly" but also zero Windows installation found. Sure enough, restart still showed Bootmgr missing until I put that old crummy disk back to the top of the boot list.

Please help!!

 

[Mellon Head]

Did you leave the crummy old disk connected while you tried to repair the bootrec?

 

[sstowell]

Yes, it was marked inactive & at bottom of the BIOS boot list, but still connected.

 

[Mellon Head]

You could try rebuilding the MBR/BootMGR with that drive disconnected and see what happens. Maybe your efforts are just rebuilding the MBR on the crummy drive because that's what the repair CD finds...

 

[sstowell]

Thanks, I think that is the next step (for tomorrow!). Repeat the full 3 times magic of the Repairs with the drive disconnected (and while standing on one foot of course).

You just have to hate Windows... well at least I have to

 

[SIW2]

diskpart
sel vol q
inact
exi

Now boot repair/installation cd and run startup repair.

 

[sstowell]

Yes that was one thing I did try. Diskpart, marked all volumes inactive accept the newer install C: drive volume. I forget exactly what happened at that point: I think it would not boot, but maybe it did boot but then Q was active again... losing track of the various steps! Anyway, until I made Q: active & boot disk, I could not boot & start Windows from hard drives... got the bootmgr missing error. Tomorrow I will try these steps again, but with Q: disconnected. My fear is that the results will not be much better... but TBD.

 

[gregrocker]

Try Bootmgr - Move to C:\ with EasyBCD - Windows 7 Forums

If this fails confirm C is Active, unplug all other drives, run the 3 Startup Repairs again.

Report back results, including any error messages or failure behavior.