Lost Boot Loader / Bcd Entirely?
Jul 6, 2010
I've routinely dual booted Linux and Windows over the years, but yesterday I hit a bit of a snag. I had Windows 7 and Vista both installed on a single hard disk. Since it had been awhile since I had booted Vista I decided to delete the partition and install Linux there. What I did not realize is that when I installed 7 it left the BCD on the Vista partition. So, when I installed Linux I effectively blew away my Windows boot loader.I've tried a hundred things at this point without much luck, including the "nuclear holocaust" / manual rebuild of BCD from:Recovering the Vista Bootloader from the DVD - NeoSmart Technologies WikiA few questions / thoughts from my google searches:* Is there anything needed in /boot other than the BCD?
* I am wondering if the "active" / "boot" partition flag is causing me trouble. hen I was trying to rebuild the BCD manually using bcdedit i was getting errors that the partition was not flagged active. I tried to use diskpart to flag it active but it said that the partition type was not valid for the active flag? I was able to set it active using the Linux gparted partition manager, but I can't understand why diskpart would not flag it.* Is it possible to have your oot on a different partition then Windows? The recovery console is mapping C: to my "applications" drive and D: to my "system" drive which contains Windows. I was wondering if I need to put oot on C: instead of D:
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Nov 13, 2009
I had windows 7 originally Installed on my Laptop. I then Installed Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop version, and it installed the grub boot loader
(All on 1 single HD, each OS is on its own partition.)
This boot loader was used to dual boot between windows and Linux. However now the grub boot loader is broken, and I was talking to some people how knew about Ubuntu, and they said to just delete its partition, which I did.
Now when I boot from my HD I just get a broken grub boot loader, and can’t get even get into my Win 7. Now I just want to get ride of this Grub boot loader, and get Windows 7 MBR back. I have booted from my windows 7 recovery disc, and have done:
Startup Repair – It found no problems, but HD still only boots to broken grub boot loader
System Restore – I restored to before I was having this problem, but HD still only boots to broken grub boot loader
I am trying to figure out what commands to enter in the command prompt to repair the MBR, or maybe just view what partitions are in my computer, and then completely delete the one with Grub on it.
If I type bcdedit I get this:
Windows Boot Manager
Identifier:{bootmgr}
Device:partition = C:
Description:Windows Boot Manager
Inherit:{globalsettings}
Default:{default}
Displayorder:{default}
Windows Boot Loader
Identifier:{default}
Device:partition = D:
Path:Windowssystem32winload.exe
Description:Windows 7
Inherit:{bootsequencesettings]
Recoveryenabled: yes
Osdevice:partition = D:
Systemroot: windows
Nx:OptIn
According to this everything looks fine, The C partition is that 100MB system reserved boot partition that windows 7 creates, and the D partition is a 100GB partition that I created on the HardDrive that windows 7 was installed to. I don’t understand why the windows boot loader will not boot, somehow the grub boot loader is still over riding it, even though I deleted the partition that ubuntu was installed on, and where the grub should have been installed as well.
From the command prompt, if I use diskpart, there are only 2 partitions, a 100MB one, and a 100GB one. Those are C and D respectively, so I am not sure how the grub is still loading unless it installed itself to a NTFS partition if that is even possible.
Does anyone know what commands I can try to repair or recreate the MBR so that windows 7 will load, or maybe commands to delete this Grub boot loader?
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Oct 9, 2010
what is a boot loader?
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May 1, 2011
I have two harddrives in my computer, one is 750GB and just has a bunch of different files from my older computer (documents, movies, etc, but no traces operating system). My other harddrive is 1TB and has Windows 7 on it (which I'm typing from now). For some reason (I think after I installed a Windows Update), when I restart the computer it says, "Bootmgr is missing. Press CTR+ALT+DEL to restart". Before, this had never happened, so I figured out that I had to manually go into my HP boot menu (by pressing ESC when I first start the computer) and then choose my 1TB harddrive to boot into Windows 7. This is kind of a pain.
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Jan 31, 2011
is there a way to have windows put the boot loader on a drive of your choosing? I have 2 HDDs in my computer and from what I can tell windows put its boot loader on my other drive. is there a way (other then disconnecting the other one) to get windows to put the boot loader on the other drive like change priority in the BIOs?
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Sep 8, 2011
I recently installed Windows 7 on two different hard drives in the same computer.When installing one I disconnected the other drive, and when the first one was installed, I disconnected the first drive and installed it on the other drive.
Now only the second Windows is loaded each time I turn on the computer and boot loader screen where you can choose the OS does not show up.What went wrong and is there any possibility to restore it?
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Jan 24, 2011
I have an HP pavilion dv4-1555dx laptop that I was trying to install Linux mint 10 gnome on a PNY 8GB flash drive, I forgot to have Linux install grub to the flash drive, so it ended up installing grub to the HDD, now I need to reinstall the windows 7 boot loader but HP didn't send a windows 7 boot disk with the system (OEM windows 7) so I can't jut boot the cd and use the recovery counsel unless there is somewhere online that I can get an iso from, or is there another way?
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May 31, 2009
Windows 7 won't show on boot loader ? How do I make it show on my Boot loader menu at start up?
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Apr 21, 2011
This is quite a long story, So let me get straight to the point.On my Dell Optiplex 360 Computer (Windows 7-Ultimate) I partitioned the hard drive to make space for another windows installation. I then installed Windows Vista Ultimate on it.All of that went successfully but after a while it became useless for me and my computer.
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Jul 25, 2009
Is it possible to install Windows 7 (to a different hard drive/partition) by mounting the iso, but then not have it install a boot loader? Obviously you'd have to be using a pre-existing OS to be mounting the iso file, but I can't seem to think of a way for it to not install a boot loader.
I know it's possible to install and then afterwards remove all the boot loader stuff, but it's just a hassle to boot into the DVDs and do all the rebuildbcd or fixmbr stuff.
Also I am aware I could just burn the iso to DVD and install it from that in order to not get a bootloader, but I'd like to know if it's at all possible via mounting the iso.
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Nov 1, 2012
I have a laptop which until yesterday was dual boot (Windows 7 and SLES11). However I decided I would rather just use Windows with VMWare for any Linux needs. To do this I deleted the Linux partitions (OS, workspace, swap) from within Windows and used this extra space to add to my workspace partition on Windows and create a new partition for my VM's to sit.I got all this working very nicely and was happy with it until I rebooted to machine to see GRUB was still set to be the boot loader which is unable to do anything with no Linux partitions.What I do have is the Windows 7 Reinstallation DVD that came with the laptop however the DVD drive of my laptop is broken. I am currently writing this with a MacBook Pro (Mountain Lion) and so the only solution I can think of is using media oN DVD, and burning this to a bootable USB using the Mac and then setting up BIOS on the 'broken' laptop to boot from DVD. However I am not sure how to create a 'bootable' USB.
1) Can I use my Windows 7 reinstallation disc to recover Windows boot manager
2) If so can I do this via USB?
3) How could I make my USB 'bootable' using my Macbook Pro
4) What are the steps for recovering boot manager from the installation media
5) What is the more elegant way to 'delete' Linux partitions and ensure Windows Boot Manager works (I may also run into this problem with a workstation I set up in same way yesterday but have yet to reboot0
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Aug 29, 2010
My laptop apparently is having a hard time booting. I start it up, it will display the blinking cursor and stay like that forever, i hard shut it down and the BIOS will search for new hardware (as its suppose to) and then the blinking cursor will appear for around a minute before booting up! this is really annoying and ive already Reset the BIOS to default and Reinstalled windows (deleted all Partitions and made one)
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Oct 9, 2009
I know this does not necessarily pertain to Windows installation, but I did not know where else to place this thread. I know it is possible to burn isos to a thumb drive, but is there a way to put a boot loader on a thumb drive so I can have many images on separate partitions? For example, I want to partition my 32GB thumb drive into 700MB partitions, so that I can have Clonezilla live on one, GParted on another, and maybe the Windows 7 repair disk on another. Is this possible?
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Jan 28, 2013
my HP 550 laptop is failing to boot. upon attempting to do startup repair, it gives me a root cause as "boot manager failed to find os loader".and booting from safe mode is not present despite hitting f8 at boot.
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Jun 6, 2011
All I did was open a video strored locally with no connection to the internet. Shut down computer properly. I go to start it up and start up repair kick in. I have let the thing run on startup repair over night and a total of 12 straight hours. It reboots once, maybe even twice. Then it just sit a says attempting repairs. I just did a hard shut done. I was able to pull the data off using Uburba (not sure of the spelling). The USB 2.0 is not recognized in start up repair command prompt. I had a image saved to a CD. I can't get past the username password. The one I had wrote down does not work. System restore fails because I can't it doesn't have a .DDL file or it says something. If I could get the USB 2.0 to work I have an external that has a couple of images that would be better than re-installing. I tried moving the image into the computer then using the image restore, but I learned that doesn't work because it somehow tracks were it wrote the image to. This is way I need the usb 2.0 to pull the image from my external HD.What is the default password of HomeGroupUser$?
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Jul 25, 2012
I have a Windows 7 Pro x64 which has been running for a many months without any issues.Three days ago I restarted the machine and Windows 7 didn't start anymore. I have spent a lot of time investigating it and could not find anything wrong with the boot loader or the file system where the OS is.So the boot loader works, I have also replaced it just in case but nothing changed. I can go into the boot loader menu and chose the Windows 7 entry but then the black screen which says "Starting Windows" comes and nothing else happens.Note that the computer doesn't hang, it simply gets stuck at some point and doesn't do anything else. The HDD LED stays on from this point forward and that is it, if I press ctrl+alt+del it restarts and if it were completely frozen it wouldn't.
This Windows 7 runs on a pair of drives in RADI1 so it cannot be a problem with the drives. I have run checks just to be sure and couldn't find anything, no file system issues or bad blocks.The raid controller is not reporting any issues with the drives.I have booted with the windows install cd and tried to repair it many times but the auto repair says it could not repair it, other times it tells me that no issue was found.The boot manager is working fine, I have replaced it just in case using bootrec /fixmbr and /fixboot and also bootsect /nt60 all.I have checked for corrupt files with sfc and no files were corrupt, at least no critical system files.I have manually replaced the winload.exe file but this didn't help either.The problem seems to be at the stage where the boot manager passes control to winload.exe.
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Nov 11, 2011
I have a PC with 2 hard drives- the first hard drive has a single partition and windows 7 64-bit is installed on this hard disk.Now I wish to install CentOS 6 on the first partition of the second hard disk.I have created the dvd for installing Cent OS also.How do I configure the boot loader in Windows? If I install Linux on second hard disk, will this overwrite the Windows Boot Loader? How do I create a dual boot system so that the windows boot loader correctly shows linux as an option, so that I am able to load either Windows 7 (existing) or Linux(on second hard disk- not yet installed)
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Oct 5, 2011
I am currently using windows 7 ultimate x64. I was in the middle of a process restoring my computer to a few days back and suddenly it froze. I did a power shut down and when I turned it back on, I wasn't able to get back into windows. I was brought to startup repair and it gave me errors. 'Boot manager failed to find OS loader'. There was options for restoring, but all my restore points were gone. Recovery wasn't able to find image backup.
"Startup repair cannot repair this computer automatically". I was told to go into safe mode to restore, but whenever I enter safe mode, startup repair would take over and shows the same errors, also I read a tutorial using a repair disc ( made a copy of it on someone elses ultimate x64 computer) and I get the 0x00000e9 error if i boot from disc. What can I do? As of now I don't have the installation disc with me. I wont be able to get hold of it until tomorrow. There's a lot of important files in that hard drive and I really cant lose any.
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Jun 6, 2010
Just now I lost boot files to boot into Windows 7... I am running triple boot with XP, Vista and Windows 7,.... Now I cannot boot into Windows 7 XP and Visa are OK... I can see and access Windows 7 drive from any of 2 OS but can not boot into it.
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Nov 24, 2009
When my computer wouldn't turn on in the morning I did the usual diagnostics; unplug things one at time test with spare components etc... Any way I qucikly figured out the PSU was dead so I ordered a new one and was back up and running. However when I reassembled the computer after unplugging everything (and removing the m/b) I plugged the HDDs back into different SATA ports from which they orginally came. When I came to boot the computer up I got the error message: 'BOOTMGR missing' or it may have been 'NTLDR missing' I can't remember.
I fixed this problem by using the 7 startup repair utility. I have no problem booting into Windows 7, but I have lost the option to boot into my XP install on anther disk. I looked in the boot tab under System Configuration and the only OS showing is this Windows 7 install. So my question is this: how can I get the choice of which OS to boot back?
(I should mention that the XP install is on a different disk from the 7 install).
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Jan 17, 2009
The problem I'm having is that I had been running WinXP SP3, I used GParted to partition my hdd so I could do a clean install and try out windows 7. The odd thing is though, at first when it would boot up I'd have two option to select from, either "Windows 7" or "Select an older version of windows", then I reinstalled windows 7 at one point(to the same partition used before) and lost that menu all together, now whenever I turn my PC on it just acts like windows 7 is the only OS installed.
I know my other partition is still there though, my question is, how would I go about retrieving it if possible. Can I just pop in my WinXP disc and do a repair or recovery on the other partition? Never had this problem dual booting windows and linux so im unsure as to what I should do.
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Feb 4, 2009
After I installed Windows 7 64 to dual boot with Win732, and fixed the boot menu to show both options (thanks to those of you that helped with that), I somehow lost the animated boot screen splash. I now have the "Vista" green bar.
Is there a setting somewhere that controls this?
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Jan 5, 2011
MSI Wind 210 Netbook, 250 gig hd, vista (came with it) then upgraded to Windows 7 (2nd boot option)I deleted the dual boot menu using partition doctor (dumb mistake, dont ask) now all that shows up when I goto boot is,bootmgr is missing,press any key to restart,pressing a key.intel undii, pxe-2.1 (build 082)reboot and select proper boot device,thats it,It came with restore via the f3 key option on boot , but that shows nothing
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Jul 16, 2009
Ok, i have windows 7 already installed fine on my 2x raptor raided drives, i decided to install xp 32 on a new partition on the 2x raided raptors, after using nlite to integrate my raid drivers into the new xp iso (no floppy) it installed fine on the new partition.
However, i saw no boot menu on reboot and every time xp would load by default with f8 showing no other OS to boot. I then ran the windows 7 64 dvd and attempted a repair of startup option, it failed 5 times in a row quoting a corrupt boot sector.
I was all ready to give up when suddenly it just repaired it after the 6th attempt, i did nothing different but it said to reboot so i did and to my incredible relief my win 7 install started booting again.
But again, no boot menu and this time the xp boot has been lost! Is there any way i can manually add something to get a dual boot function running?
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Sep 15, 2009
I have lost the ability to dual boot after installing windows XP.
I Originally had windows XP. I partitioned the drive in order to install windows 7. Installed windows 7 fine, no problems, was able to dual boot. After getting data from XP partition. I decided to do a clean install of xp. After doing that my machine only boots into XP, I no longer have the dual boot option.
I have tried booting off the windows 7 dvd and 'repair computer'. It said it found some problems and fixed them. Rebooted, still only booted into XP. Tried booting off DVD again ran 'Startup Repair option' Again, said it fixed some things, still only boots into XP.
I also tried EasyBCD and it said it fixed the problems, but everything is still the same. I can only boot into windows xp. No dual boot.
My boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect are all on partition that has windows 7 installed.
Saw the posts about Vistabootpro but wanted to make sure i went that route before i purchased it and wanted to make sure of the correct steps to follow.
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Nov 8, 2009
So I just got my hands on Windows 7 and wanted to play around with it, and everything works but:
Previous Computer Setup:
I had a dual boot with XP and Vista that worked perfectly (both OS's were on separate HD's and worked / booted correctly.)
Drive C: --------> Vista (Now Windows 7)
Drive D: --------> Windows XP
Problem:
After upgrading my Vista to Windows 7 (Via clean install) I lost my boot menu to choose XP. Now everytime I flip the power it boots DIRECTLY into Windows 7.
How do I recover my boot screen option so I can boot back into XP when I need to?
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Aug 9, 2009
i used win 7 and wanted to install xp as a multi-boot on my laptop for trying an xp based encyclopedia but when i installed xp i got error "ERROR LOADING OPERATING SYSTEM" so i reinstalled xp and realized that i cant see my 2 25 gb partitions full of data,so kindly guide me to get my partitions back i have currently reinstall win 7.
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Jun 3, 2009
I just installed windows 7 ultimate on my pc.
i already had xp32 and vista 64 business on a dual boot on the same HDD before installing windows 7.
during windows 7 install, I selected the xp32 partition, formatted it and installed windows 7 over the top as I no longer wanted xp32.
When the windows 7 install was complete I expected to see a dual boot screen with
option 1. windows 7
and option 2. vista64
unfortunatelty i have no dual boot options, the pc now just goes straight into windows 7. It doesnt sem to know that vista is there.
i would appreciate assistance in getting a dual boot set up with vista64 and windows 7
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May 19, 2012
I was trying to restore my Toshiba Sattelite L645-S4056 to factory default and reinstall windows 7 by inbuilt recovery system. While i was formatting the computer swtiched off itself. Then i couldnot access inbuilt recovery during booting. The computer wont boot with any windwos cd. It said something like "Cannot boot.Enter a bootable disc". I then installed a linux distero by booting with a USB device.The linux system works fine but i need windows 7. It shows that my hardisk is totally empty. There is no reserved part previously occupied by recovery system.I didn't get a recovery disc with my laptop. Any other dvd wont boot. How can i install back my Windows 7? What is wrong with the system? Is there any way to get windows 7 back?
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Aug 10, 2012
I had Windows 7 and Xubuntu set up in dual boot by EasyBCD, a well known utility.Today the linux kernel has been updated and, after the following reboot, the choice of Xubuntu OS at the dual boot prompt didn't work.So I went through Windows, launched EasyBCD to fix things and:
- changed the order the entries (Win 7 up, first)
- selected Windows 7 as default OS
- removed Xubuntu entry
- added again Xubuntu entry through EasyBCD procedure
- saved (maybe I should have saved after each of the changes)
When I rebooted I've found that two identical Xubuntu entries, each pointing to the Linux OS, and no Win 7.I've tried to access Win 7 by Grub, but it points to the dual boot screen, so I'm at start point again.I don't have the Win 7 disk but the usual recovery partition. No backup. Going through the recovery partition gets me back to the dual boot screen..Is there any way to put it in order again? Could you suggestions work in this case?I know that, from Linux, I can install and overwrite MBR with free mbr.bin
sudo apt-get install syslinux
sudo dd if=/usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin of=/dev/sda
But I'm not sure it will give me back Windows 7.
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Mar 11, 2009
I have messed up my dual boot of XP Pro and Seven
Seven was working well, but XP was playing up.
I did a restore from an earlier acronis image of XP.
XP now works again, but as you have guessed I have lost the dual boot menu to select Windows 7 when I bootup.
I know boot.ini does not apply with Seven.
Please tell me how to get my neatly tweaked Seven back on the boot menu,
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