windows 7 boot loader missing/corrupt

[chbell10]

I recently Uninstalled my Ubuntu 9.10 partition from my 500gb IDE hard drive, and thought nothing of formatting the partition and setting it up as a new windows drive.
But, out of my own forgetfulness, i forgot that in rder to dual boot windows 7 with ubuntu, you Have to install the GRUB boot loader to be able to boot into both at will. this process wipes the original windows bootloader, and simply replaces it. Well, once I rebooted my pc, GRUB attempted to find a linux partition that was not there, and gave me this: "Error:unknown filesystem. Grub rescue>"
After some online digging, I found several articles that told me to use the "repair" feature on the windows 7 install disc. I did this, and the Disc was unable to find my windows 7 installation, although when i used the x:/ command prompt, i was able to easily see the C: drive,and the windows system. When i used the "repair startup" command, it ran through and told me that it was unable to fix the error, and that the root was that the Bootloader was missing or corrupt.
I think this is an error caused by what i think to be the real root dilemma, when my hard drive is physically set as the first boot device, the CD-rom drive is undetected by the BIOS, and vis versa, although when the CD-rom is set as the first, im able to boot into the windows 7 install CD. Im not sure if this is due to my BIOS being outdated, or what could cause this-but i believe its causing the cd to not see the drive as a boot device, or a win-7 installation.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, I have scoured these forums, and worked for hours on my own to no avail.
all suggestions are appreciated.
Thank you for reading this small book i seem to have typed.

 

[richc46]

Is this what you are missing?
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/20864-mbr-restore-windows-7-master-boot-record.html

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello chbell10, welcome to Seven Forums!



You can see an out-line of the partition specific wipe process at Option Three of this tutorial at the link below; there is also additional useful information at the second link and be sure to post back with any further questions you may have and to keep us informed.


Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times

 

[chbell10]

I tried all of the solutions listed above, and again to no avail. I wiped the Drive which previously had grub on it with the bootable CD, and marked the windows 7 drive as active, and that did nothing for the repair tools to see the installation, although when i followed the link provided by Richc46, it showed that there was indeed a win 7 ultimate installation in place, alas when i ran the command "bootrec /rebuildbcd", it told me that "the requested system device cannot be found".I also ran the repair 3 times with reboots, but that only gave me the new root error "NoOsinstalled", which is very contradictory of it to say,I think -_____-
I forgot to mention before, but this might be of some help, when at the basic first screen of the windows 7 DVD,
I select "repair my computer", It proceeds to a progress bar window, which says on it "searching for windows installations", which then proceeds to a dialogue boxt stating "windows found problems with your computers startup options. Do you want to apply repairs and restart your computer?", and i then select "repair and restart", which promptly gives me an error dialogue box saying "failed to save startup options", which then proceeds to the section where you choose your windows installation, but in my case-it shows nothing at all.
Maybe that will help a diagnosis.
Thank you for your help, and time

 

[gregrocker]

Boot the Win7 DVD, press Shift F10 to open a Command Line, type:

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot

Close command line, enter Repair console to see if it now finds an installation to repair and will Startup Repair correctly.

What you are doing here is jump-starting the Repair by preceding it with bootrec commands which are automated in Win7 Startup Repair, but which may not be completing if it is malfunctioning due to OS corruption.

In the future, consider putting Linux distribs on a separate HD booted via BIOS so that GRUB is not necessary and Win7 isn't involved. Backup a Win7 image externally so that you never have to reinstall again.

 

[SolarWind]

Firstly - I have removed grub with the simple bootec.exe /fixmbr 100% of the time.

So from the top - make sure SATA native mode is disabled in your BIOS (device config)

Installation DVD - R - Command

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot

bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup
c:
cd boot
attrib bcd -s -h -r
ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
bootrec /RebuildBcd

 

[chbell10]

I tried your suggestions, but There was no change in the repair error. It says that "startup repair cannot automatically repair this computer"

Would any other information be helpful in any way to solving this?
if so, please let me know, and I'll do my best to oblige.

 

[chbell10]

And to solarwind, This is the error i got when i used the command listed:
"bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup"-The store export operation has failed. The requested system device cannot be found.

 

[SolarWind]

This is quite a problem!

Tak a look at the following: Windows 7 Suddenly Won’t Boot – Reboot and Select Proper Boot Device or Insert Boot Media in Selected Boot Device and Press Any Key – Repairing the Windows 7 Bootloader « Russ' Do It Yourself Home Workshop

Follow the instructions from where it says additional actions i.e DISKPART and fingers crossed this solves it. Other than that I am totally out of ideas so could only recommend a complete reinstall.

 

[gregrocker]

All of those bootrec and bootsect commands are automated in Win7 Startup Repair, along with dozens of other tests and fixes which require it sometimes to be run up to 3 separate times with reboots to complete MBR repairs.

However, as implied earlier bootrec can sometimes jumpstart the Repair utility if no installation is found to begin with.

Some installations cannot be repaired, especially ones corrupted by GRUB. I will often go on running Startup Repair anyway and sometimes get it running but at some point you may want to cut your losses, wipe your HD and clean reinstall the OS's to separate drives if at all possible. If not: http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/83923-where-install-ubuntu-my-system.html#post733626

You can copy out your files if necessary using the DVD with this method: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/93347-copy-paste-windows-recovery-console.html

 

[chbell10]

I followed alot of the steps provided in the article, as his dilemma seems almost mirrorative of mine, and it now sees the OS, although it cannot repair it.
i ran setup three times again with reboots, and nothing-other than when booting now, instead of the old error message, i get "disk read error, ctrl alt del to continue"
that sounds bad guys.
sounds really bad.

 

[mjf]

c:\boot ........etc
assumes your boot folder's on c:
If you've got a 100MB active system reserved partition it's on there.

If that's the case you will need to temporarily assign it a letter & use that letter.
I'm a bit surprised you would need to resort to this.

you might want to run bcdedit and post a screenshot of the output.

 

[SolarWind]

Removing grub should be a quite painless operation. I have installed distro after distro and each time fixmbr has removed grub without issue. I then use diskwizard to remove and merge the partition into C:

Disk read error is just another symptom of a corrupt MBR (In your case)

Well as it now see's the OS and grub seems to have gone - now would be a good time to try bootrec.exe /fixmbr etc.

 

[chbell10]

I ran the bootrec.exe commands, with no change in the output, although when i did the startup repair again this time, the root error cause was as follows:

root cause found:
------------------------------------------------
Boot sector for disk partition is corrupt.

Repair action: Boot sector repair
Result: failed: Error code = 0x49c
-------------------------------------------------

Another thing that i tried doing was swaping the active drives around between the available partitions, and when i activated E:, and ran the command "Bootrec.exe /Rebuildbcd", it gave me the output That the boot sector of the disk might be corrupt, and as this is the partition where it tells me there is a windows installation (when running "bootrec.exe /Scanos"),i wonder if there is anything that could be done to repair the corrupted boot sector?

 

[mjf]

Post a disk management screen shot!

 

[chbell10]

How would I do that?
I wouldnt know how to take a screenshot without being first booted into windows 0_0

 

[SolarWind]

Free Download Magic Partition Manager Software - Partition Wizard Online

Can you make a bootable flash or disc? You can then have a good look at what is going on with regards to partitions file system etc. There is also a utility to rebuild the MBR.

Have you Just one HDD on this machine? Was Windows always E:?

If you manage to run this then try to jot down the partition drive letters, file system etc. Also see if your 100MB partition is there.

 

[mjf]

Free Download Magic Partition Manager Software - Partition Wizard Online

Can you make a bootable flash or disc? You can then have a good look at what is going on with regards to partitions file system etc. There is also a utility to rebuild the MBR.

Have you Just one HDD on this machine? Was Windows always E:?

If you manage to run this then try to jot down the partition drive letters, file system etc. Also see if your 100MB partition is there.

Good idea

Also with with command prompt (via Repair Disk)
>diskpart
>list volumes
.
.
>exit

will give you some info.

 

[SolarWind]

Maybe if we reassign the drive letter from E: back to C: we may have some success. I'll wait to see what partition wizard brings back.

 

[chbell10]

I ran the partition wizard Boot cd, and all of the partitions are NTFS, and the drive letters don seem to show,as opposed to the drive labels?
But, when i did what MJF suggested, it came up like this:

Volume--ll---Letter----ll----Label----ll--Filesystem---ll----type----ll----size----ll----status
__________________________________________________________________________
----0-----------G---------Cd-rom---------CDFS---------dvd-rom----3562MB-----Healthy
----1-----------D-----------new------------NTFS---------partition-----227GB------Healthy
----2-----------C----------system RESE-----NTFS---------partition-----100MB------Healthy
----3-----------E-------------C------------NTFS---------partition-----235GB------Healthy
----4-----------F-------------SR-----------NTFS---------partition-----2933MB-----Healthy

Windows has always been C:, as far as i have known, and This is the only HDD i have ever used with this build.
And as stated above, the 100mb system reserved partition is there.
Also, when i tried to run the "rebuild BCD" option, under disk>rebuild MBR, the option itself is unusable for some reason?