BOOT MGR MISSING - PLEASE HELP !!!

Hi everyone,

I have been reading through many forums online, with many different solutions to this problem, and I have tried some of them, however I am still stuck with the same error.

It might be helpful if I tell the whole story about the hard drives I am trying to boot. To begin with,my firend asked me to format his drives and install windows on one of them, so I took them home and did everything on my own computer, I have windows 7 64bit installed, so I have connected them both to my os and simply formatted them right clicking on the drive and selecting a quick format. I have unplugged my hdd, and put his drives in, then succesfully booted my win7 cd , installed os and I thought it's all done now. But when I plugged my hdd back, I did get boot mgr missing error. The only way I could bypass this was running win7 installation from the inside of os, using friends hdd..So I got my own drive up and running,later I formatted his drives once AGAIN using the same quick format.. When I tried to boot wn7 cd's (I have tried 3 100% working bootable cd's) using HIS computer and those 2 formatted drives I get the same error again .. boot mgr is missing .. Nothing helps here .. We have been considering just simply buying new clean hard drive, but before we do that I wanted to try getting help here .. We can not boot ANY cd's, not even repair disks, which I have also made .. So we can not enter any repair mode or command prompt etc.. Both drives are visible and completely usable on my PC, as a storage unit, but not for booting an OS..


If anyone has some possible sollution to the problem, I am happy to provide more information .

Thank you in advance

do you get a prompt that lets you boot from a cd on startup when you put the repair disk? do you get to the bios?
windows 7 bootmgr is missing-- resolved using WinRE - Microsoft Community

Originally Posted by kurteb

do you get a prompt that lets you boot from a cd on startup when you put the repair disk? do you get to the bios?
windows 7 bootmgr is missing-- resolved using WinRE - Microsoft Community

Thank you for a quick response .. I can get to the bios, that's all I can do .. I get the list of my drives, in a right order, everything seems fine there, but when I get next screen (I don't know how to call that, it shows up only for a few sec) Than at the bottom I get ''Boot from cd/dvd, Press any key to boot from cd/dvd'', so I keep pressingh all the keys I can possibly reach, and nothing , I finally get the ''Boot mgr missing, press CTRL + ALT + DEL to Restart.

It would really be best if you installed the OS using the machine it was going to run on. The devices would be set up correctly and you would know if the drive controller (AHCI or IDE) was correct.

If you need to clean the drives, you can use Diskpart from the command prompt and you can get that prior to installing by using Shift+F10 on one of the first two Install pages.

We always suggest installing with just one drive installed, unless you know for sure which drive is set first in the Bios drive priority. If you have two drives installed, there is a chance part of the install will go on the other drive from the OS.

As far as booting the DVD/CDs, some older DVD drives cannot handle the Windows Installer. But it should at least boot to the Install DVD. And as you mention, seeing a "Boot to DVD - Hit key" type message usually shows the media is bootable and available.

Any insight on the types of computers you are using, age, models, etc?

after the bios, but before it reads the hard drive, you have to hit the F key for your computer type. F3, F6, or F8, usually. (swapping his hard drive into your hardware configuration is not a good idea)

Originally Posted by kurteb

after the bios, but before it reads the hard drive, you have to hit the F key for your computer type. F3, F6, or F8, usually.

kurteb, what it will open for me if I press one of F keys ?

there are 2 things that will influence your boot: the bios menu or the boot menu. in the bios, i don't know what kind of computer you have, so i can't be more specific, but generally you should be able to select which hardware will be bootable. In the boot menu you can select the specific way you want that boot to boot from, for just that boot.

Saltgrass, I know it would have been better just to install it on my friends computer in a first place, well at least I know now But at this stage we have tried both computers with the same drive we want windows on, and that's what we're getting ..

Can you explain me a bit more in detail about that Diskpart from the command prompt ? Does it mean you need to get to win installation or just computer start up pages, because I can not get to any further than first two pages on a start up ..

As for the drive priority on my pc it picks them up automaticlly, the way they are plugged into my sata slots , going from SATA_0, SATA_1,SATA_2,SATA_3 .. I keep my DVD drive the last in the chain, but on the same cable as 1st OS drive..So the only thing that I really need to change is boot order, from dvd to hdd and vice verca .. So as far as I'm concerned, I know what I am doing here ..And I did the same set up on my friends computer But I shouldn't have tried installing OS on friends drive with my PC in a first place. That was stupid .. To make things easier I will leave my computer for now, because I don't want to do any more mess , I have built my PC myself and it is my DAW.. I'm happy to have it up & running ..

The drive we want to install win7 on is WD3000JS, not a newest drive out there def .. His PC is HP Pavillion of some type .. I don't know much about it, but I could get all the information possible if you tell me what exactly you need to know .. I may need to go to his house ant check it myself, probably BIOS, that's were I can get information .. My friends is not much of the help here, tha's why I am doing it

Originally Posted by kurteb

there are 2 things that will influence your boot: the bios menu or the boot menu. in the bios, i don't know what kind of computer you have, so i can't be more specific, but generally you should be able to select which hardware will be bootable. In the boot menu you can select the specific way you want that boot to boot from, for just that boot.

So this part is fairly simple to understand. I select dvd if I want to boot win7 cd or system repair disk, and hdd if I want to boot from it .. But I don't have anything on that drive, it was forimattted in NTFS, that's all ..

My friend will bring his computer to me today, so I will be able to try things ..

for diskpart: DiskPart Command-Line Options