Bootmgr missing on Win 7 fresh install

[racroesus]

Hi All

I tried to install Win 7 64 bit on a new hard drive. I got to the "Enter the key" message and when I did this the system restarted and I got 20 mins of hard drive activity but no signal to the monitor. I was unable to boot from the DVD and I ended up trying to wipe the drive using my laptop. I now get the bootmgr missing message and I cannot get the system to start from my DVD drive. I have tried to change boot order in BIOS to no avail.
Any suggestions?
I don't think that my laptop was able to wipe the System partition of 100MB that 7 originally set up at the beginning.
Thanks

[Duke_]

I'm not sure if you have multiple hard drives - if you do this might help!
I installed Win7 on a system with several drives, all was fine and the system would restart ok. As soon as I removed the installation DVD the system would not boot and could not find bootldr. No amount of re-arranging boot order sorted it. Turns out for some strange reason some part of the startup files had ended up in the wrong location - if I 'repaired' windows with the other hard drive still plugged in it failed to boot unless I had the Windows DVD in. Once I removed the other drive then repaired windows it booted without the Windows DVD fine.

[racroesus]

Ta Duke
I was using two discs, one from the original Vista system and a new larger one. I have disconnected all discs and booted from the DVD. I then connected the discs and 7 said that I could not install to the new one because of BIOS problems. I formatted the drive from the installation screen and deleted the partitions. I rebooted and at the moment with only the new disc connected, 7 is trying to install.
Fingers crossed!

[oolon]

Windows 7 likes to create a small boot partition if you create the partitions yourself it does not create it and therefore does not boot. Delete all the partitions then get windows 7 to do an auto partion layout, resize the big partitions if you like but leave the small one alone. I would expect you have deleted that system partition.

It may also depend on your systems install disc is they are restore disks and you don't want the restore partition it can end up not working as it gets its numbering wrong.

[racroesus]

Thank you Oolon
I got a full 7 Home premium disc. I got things to the stage that it told me it had installed. The system then re-booted and went no further than a lot of disc access, no signal to the monitor.
I'm trying yet again to install and the system is going through its stages.
Cheers

[snootyjim]

Windows 7 likes to create a small boot partition if you create the partitions yourself it does not create it and therefore does not boot.

It boots just fine without the 100MB partition. It's for recovery rather than boot purposes as I understand it.

[oolon]

It boots just fine without the 100MB partition. It's for recovery rather than boot purposes as I understand it.

Well when I got my copy of ultimate, I did a manual partitioning, and removed that 100MB area and my system would not boot. When i did the install with it worked fine, no idea if that just limited to some system or all, 32 or 64, I installed the 64 bit version of the OS. I had other problems with my Alien ware laptop, which also required an area, and seemed to use it for restore and boot.

[Paul Adams]

It boots just fine without the 100MB partition. It's for recovery rather than boot purposes as I understand it.

In the majority of cases (clean install, single HDD) the "system reserved" partition is the active one containing the boot manager (bootmgr) and Boot Configuration Database (BCD).
(The boot loader (winload.exe) is on the Windows partition as there is 1 per OS installation).

The system reserved partition being separate allows the boot configuration database to be independent of any specific OS installation, and the OS partition(s) can now be Bitlocker encrypted.

Deployment tools that put the recovery tools on the system reserved partition tend to make it 300MB rather than 100MB.
OEMs might make much bigger recovery partitions with their factory image to restore back to the OOB settings.

If installing Windows on a system with partitions already created, or mutliple disks present may lead to no system reserved partition being created, or if it is then it isn't necessarily where the BCD will be located.
The Disk Management MMC when booted into Windows will report which partitions are flagged as active, system (BIOS boot), boot (OS), page file & crash dump.

If installing Windows on a system with an active partition and BCD present, then it should be updated to have a pointer to the boot loader on the partition the OS is being installed on.

[oolon]

Very interesting point about whole disk encryption and bit locker there. That might explain the need for it!

[_alias]

I've had this issues before, i happens i think with dos and windows don't agreed on boot order.

My ssd is like drive k

And the raid i have is always disk 0 in the bios and i can't move it os the ssd is first. reguard less of the ports on the mb i use.

[racroesus]

Hi All

Thanks for all the replies, I wasn't able to find this thread for a while so I haven't been on. I have tried with a formatted disc with no allocation at all and windows does seem to set up the C and system partitions but still I get the restart to give the hard disc light flickering away and no signal to the screen. I left it to run for a long time with no further activity. I will talk to the helpline to see if I can make further progress.

[The Fish]

Interesting. As one who will be migrating soon to Win 7, from Paul's excellent post I am thinking that disconnecting my other two hard drives and letting Win 7 do it's thing and reformatting the disk is the future to avoid bootmgr and BCD issues?

Is that what you have done racroesus?

[jonathan_phang]

Another thing that you can try when this happens is to boot from your Windows 7 install disc and then after the first confirmation screen, you can select to repair your install. On selecting this, you get a number of options, one of which is to fix 'Booting' issues. I believe this will effectively repoint the bootloader to the correct versions again.

[JoshB]

I'd go with Jonathan's advice, most probably the easiest way and quiest to sort it out for yourself.

[Steve A]

+1 on taking Jonathan's advice, However if it doesnt work try it a few times, i had same issue and it took me around 2-3 trys to get it to repair (not sure why).

Worth keeping in mind if it fails to fix the first time.