Solved Windows 7 won't boot

[rickwoolf123]

Right, whilst I realise there have been many posts on this subject my situation is slightly different. My computer originally came installed with Windows Vista 32-bit and when Widows 7 Ultimate 64-bit was released I wanted to upgrade. Obviously I had to do a custom installation as you can't simply upgrade from a 32-bit to a 64-bit system. To get around this I just installed windows 7 on my other (empty) hard drive. For a while everything worked fine and I had the option to either boot Windows Vista or Windows 7 on startup. I found that I was satisfied with Windows 7 and wanted to get rid of Vista to free up some hard drive space. I used Paragon Partition Manager and Formatted the old Vista drive. I presumed that the system would have no trouble booting Windows 7 as the option had been there when the dual boot was available...how foolish of me. When I restarted the computer text appeared saying "no items to display". Initially I thought that the computer was just trying to boot from the clean harddrive so at the next startup I went into boot options and selected the other drive. I was then informed that "BOOT MGR" was missing and thus it couldn't load. Having misplaced the Windows 7 installation CD I ended up just reinstalling the old Vista OS. Is there any way I can get Windows 7 to boot properly again without doing a full reinstall?

P.S. After going to Computer -> Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> Advanced Tab -> Startup and Recovery Settings and clicking on the Default Operating System drop down menu only Windows Vista was present.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

 

[myzr7]

Welcome to SevenForums rickwoolf123
You can try to do a start up repair. You will need your install disc.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/681-startup-repair.html?ltr=S

 

[rickwoolf123]

Thanks Ill hunt around for the ever elusive disc.

 

[SIW2]

Hi Rick,

Make Sure the 7 partition is marked Active.

D/L a recovery CD



Make 7 HD first in Bios boot order - boot the cd and run startup repair 3 times.

 

[rickwoolf123]

Thanks SIW2 as I still can't find the damned Windows 7 installation disc this seems like a good option. Will let you know how I get on

 

[gregrocker]

As SIW2 advises, set your Win7 HD to be first HD to boot in BIOS, after DVD.

Then boot your Win7 DVD or Repair CD, in Recovery tools open a Command Line to mark the Win7 drive active:

Type:

DISKPART
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK # (for Windows 7 disk)
active
exit

Now return to Recovery tools list and run Startup Repair 3 separate times to rewrite the MBR to Win7.

You may need to unplug the Vista disk to achieve this if it interferes.

 

[rickwoolf123]

Thanks to all your help I'm now typing this from Windows 7, crisis over. The startup repair worked perfectly and I didn't need the install disc. Thanks again for your quick and effective solutions.

 

[myzr7]

So you downloaded the recovery disc that SWI2 pointed you to? And you did not need to find your missing disc. Cool thanks for posting your resolution. Happy Holidays to you!