MBR - Restore Windows 7 Master Boot Record

Hey, a friend came over and did magicky things on screens I've never thought of and seems to think that it's the hard disk itself that broke and not anything on it. With this information, I'm not going to take the time fixing it and instead replace it with a duo or trio of hard drives, most likely 3 500 Gb drives, with RAID 5, seeing as it seems the most useful RAID available. If you have any advice on that, could you message that to me please? Thanks for your help.
-Adrien

Porkpotpie said:

Hey, a friend came over and did magicky things on screens I've never thought of and seems to think that it's the hard disk itself that broke and not anything on it. With this information, I'm not going to take the time fixing it and instead replace it with a duo or trio of hard drives, most likely 3 500 Gb drives, with RAID 5, seeing as it seems the most useful RAID available. If you have any advice on that, could you message that to me please? Thanks for your help.
-Adrien

I found RAID fun to play with, but Windows 7 has an excellent backup that is much simpler and less time consuming than RAID.

Cheers!
Robert

This is nice, however in step 3 i have nothing to select the box is empty.

I tried the startup repair, it says my boot record is corrupt and was unable to repair.

All I did is re-boot the machine ... and it came up with a no OS Error.

Can you install win 7 over the top of itself?

Zino1 said:

This is nice, however in step 3 i have nothing to select the box is empty.

I tried the startup repair, it says my boot record is corrupt and was unable to repair.

All I did is re-boot the machine ... and it came up with a no OS Error.

Can you install win 7 over the top of itself?

Hello Zino1, and welcome to Windows Seven Forums!

There must be a reason your computer cannot find the OS. Before reinstalling, I would suggest doing some checking first. For example: does the BIOS recognize the hard drive during the bootup process? Is the hard drive with the OS the first hard drive in boot order?

Also when your Windows 7 Ultimate was installed on your home built computer, did you allow Windows to create the 100MB "System Reserved" partition? Is this partition marked "Active"? If the partition with the "Boot Files" is not the "Active" partition, Windows may not be able to see there is an OS there.

Cheers!
Robert

Robert,

Thanks for the reply,

I downloaded Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows from the WD web site .. it does show the drive, but i am not sure what else the program does.
my BIOS shows the drive also ....

there is the 100MB "system reserved" present from the WD utility.

i ran the repair several times from the Win 7 CD but no change

Zino1 said:

Robert,

Thanks for the reply,

I downloaded Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows from the WD web site .. it does show the drive, but i am not sure what else the program does.
my BIOS shows the drive also ....

there is the 100MB "system reserved" present from the WD utility.

i ran the repair several times from the Win 7 CD but no change

"Partition Wizard" is a handy tool to have around:

Best Free Partition Manager Freeware and free partition magic for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.

Burn it to a bootable CD, boot to it and see if the 100MB "System Reserved" partition is the "Active" one. If not, you can mark it "Active" with "Partition Wizard".

Data Lifeguard Diagnostic will check the hard drive for damage to the platter surface where data is stored. If enough of the surface is failing, it will warn you to save the data and replace the hard drive.

Cheers!
Robert

i just downloaded it ... running it now ...

Ran Partition Wizard, it shows i have a MBR active, yet it will not boot ...no operating system error

i set another one active and now i get bootmgr is missing "Press Ctrl+Alt+Del" to restart ...
not sure what will do since all it does is reboot the computer .... which i have done many times...

Zino1 said:

i set another one active and now i get bootmgr is missing "Press Ctrl+Alt+Del" to restart ...
not sure what will do since all it does is reboot the computer .... which i have done many times...

First make sure the 100MB "System Reserved" partition is marked active. Then using your Windows 7 Ultimate DVD (or a Windows 7 "Repair CD" if you created one) boot to the DVD and follow the steps in this tutorial. Do not do another "Startup repair" but go to the command prompt and enter the code as described in the tutorial.

Question: How many hard drives are connected to your computer? For testing purposes, only connect the hard drive with the OS.

If all else fails, you can use "Partition Wizard" to create another partition on the hard drive and reinstall Windows 7. Hopefully, you will then also have access to your files on the original Windows 7 partition?

Cheers!
Robert