Vista - BOOTMGR is missing

[David Dufton]

Hi Guys & Gals,

This is my first request for help since registering so please be patient with me.

I am fortunate to have three machines, a PC World E Machines + scanner + printer which is the only one normally used for the Internet [a Virgin.net dial up connection] and is the one I tried to give details of when I registered. I have two laptops – an Advent 15” from PC World [again] and a Gateway 17” from Tesco. The Gateway runs on Vista, the others on XP.

There is a saying that things come in threes, the first was the PSU packed up on the PC, the second was I dropped my PDA and broke the screen and finally the Gateway has crashed very badly.

The Gateway is a 17” Laptop, Model № PA6A MX8716B. T5300 @ 1.73 GHz Intel®Core™2 CPU / RAM - 2038 Mb /HDD - 102 GB + 9.45 GB Recovery

That’s the background now for the details of the crash.

The CD/DVD was not recognised by the Device Manager and I was searching in Windows to try and find something that I just needed to tick and put the equipment back to work. It was late, I think going of for 2am, when I shut down and may have left a program open or running.

The following day when I switched on I had a black screen with white lettering BOOTMGR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del give me a blank screen then the Gateway screen and If I do nothing I go back to
BOOTMGR is Missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

On the Gateway screen I have the options in the bottom right hand corner of using F2 or F10 but using these I can do nothing except change the order of booting on F2.

If I put one of the two recovery discs [factory Vista setup or recovery programs and drivers] I can only work through to the stage of requesting hardware drivers and the process stops.

I am very careful changing things if I must but noting what I have done and using system restore but this time I cannot get into the system.

I was in the process of sorting out my documents and 5 months pictures to duplicate then onto each machine as well as disc so I have to be extra careful as everything is on the Gateway with no other backup!

Please, Guys & Gals, forgive me for being so long winded but I think it is important to try and give all the information at the beginning to try and avoid you wasting your valuable time by having to ask questions.

Can anyone help me please?

Finally to cheer you all up - it’s that time of year to remember the celebrations from the pagan midwinter that we call Christmas and then a week later we can start celebrating the New Years – yes, Years is correct, we have

January 1 CE [Common Era – the calendar used in all countries in the world]

January 10 Islamic – 1429

February 7 Chinese – Wu Zhi, Year of the Rat

September 30 Rosh Hashanah – Jewish, 5769

December 29 Islamic – 1430

All The Best To One And All In This Season Of Goodwill To All Men

Thanks in anticipation of some help,

David Dufton

[David Dufton]

Hi Guys & Gals,

This is my first request for help since registering so please be patient with me.

I am fortunate to have three machines, a PC World E Machines + scanner + printer which is the only one normally used for the Internet [a Virgin.net dial up connection] and is the one I tried to give details of when I registered. I have two laptops – an Advent 15” from PC World [again] and a Gateway 17” from Tesco. The Gateway runs on Vista, the others on XP.

There is a saying that things come in threes, the first was the PSU packed up on the PC, the second was I dropped my PDA and broke the screen and finally the Gateway has crashed very badly.

The Gateway is a 17” Laptop, Model № PA6A MX8716B. T5300 @ 1.73 GHz Intel®Core™2 CPU / RAM - 2038 Mb /HDD - 102 GB + 9.45 GB Recovery

That’s the background now for the details of the crash.

The CD/DVD was not recognised by the Device Manager and I was searching in Windows to try and find something that I just needed to tick and put the equipment back to work. It was late, I think going of for 2am, when I shut down and may have left a program open or running.

The following day when I switched on I had a black screen with white lettering BOOTMGR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del give me a blank screen then the Gateway screen and If I do nothing I go back to
BOOTMGR is Missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

On the Gateway screen I have the options in the bottom right hand corner of using F2 or F10 but using these I can do nothing except change the order of booting on F2.

If I put one of the two recovery discs [factory Vista setup or recovery programs and drivers] I can only work through to the stage of requesting hardware drivers and the process stops.

I am very careful changing things if I must but noting what I have done and using system restore but this time I cannot get into the system.

I was in the process of sorting out my documents and 5 months pictures to duplicate then onto each machine as well as disc so I have to be extra careful as everything is on the Gateway with no other backup!

Please, Guys & Gals, forgive me for being so long winded but I think it is important to try and give all the information at the beginning to try and avoid you wasting your valuable time by having to ask questions.

Can anyone help me please?

Finally to cheer you all up - it’s that time of year to remember the celebrations from the pagan midwinter that we call Christmas and then a week later we can start celebrating the New Years – yes, Years is correct, we have

January 1 CE [Common Era – the calendar used in all countries in the world]

January 10 Islamic – 1429

February 7 Chinese – Wu Zhi, Year of the Rat

September 30 Rosh Hashanah – Jewish, 5769

December 29 Islamic – 1430

All The Best To One And All In This Season Of Goodwill To All Men

Thanks in anticipation of some help,

David Dufton

[Blitzen]

January 10 Islamic – 1429

February 7 Chinese – Wu Zhi, Year of the Rat

September 30 Rosh Hashanah – Jewish, 5769

December 29 Islamic – 1430

All The Best To One And All In This Season Of Goodwill To All Men

Maybe it is the season of goodwill but its Christmas so why would we want to celebrate any of the above????

(Well maybe the SPurs fans would want Sept 30th)

[David Dufton]

Thanks for that Blitzen - I was just trying to give everyone a chance to celebrate [over-eating and too much booze] on more than one occasion!

O.K. so it is CHRISTmas but the early Christians just tacked their festival onto an existing Pagen one.

If you want usless and irrelevent facts ask me anytime - I still read books as well as everybody's favourite, the Internet.

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and yours.

Regards,

David Dufton

[excalibur2]

Hello

If bootmgr is missing could you get a copy from a friend? Of cos you would have to use a bootup source to copy the file if you have a blank screen. i.e can't boot up with installed system.

If you ever have to start again, my advice would be dual boot winxp and vista.......I've had dual boot for over a year with no problems, so am a bit rusty on giving advice but when I did have problems in the beginning, I found:-

VistaBootPRO - Go PRO with Microsoft Windows Vista Boot Manager

was very useful, esp the forum.

regards

[David Dufton]

Thanks, Excalibur,

My next step is to look at the link you have kindly given me.

Although I can get a copy from another machine I can't see how I can load it as the laptop seems to require the BM to fire up.

Regards,

David Dufton

[excalibur2]

Thanks, Excalibur,

My next step is to look at the link you have kindly given me.

Although I can get a copy from another machine I can't see how I can load it as the laptop seems to require the BM to fire up.

Regards,

David Dufton

Well there are CDs around so you can bootup and repair.....................but from the bios set to boot from dvd, then try vista repair..........of cos with original Vista installation dvd........................If you haven't the original one, I not sure if it's legal to borrow one from a friend, to re-install vista, and put the original Microsoft code in, that came with the computer.

[threepe]

Personally I don't like VistaBoot Manager. I like something that can sit in the MBR and not rely on a boot manager that lives in a partition. If the partitions get moved around then you lose all your boot option with Vista Boot Manager. Try something like OSL2000 if you are wanting to multi boot. At any road I don't think this will help you.

Try the Vista recovery environment and then fixboot, fixmbr (I am an XP person, so you may need to type something slightly different as they are what works for XP).

The next thing to consider is why you lost the boot manager in the first place. It may well be a hard drive issue, so you want to check it. SpeedFan has the ability to look at the smart status of your drive. Your drive's manufacturer will also have tools to check it out.

[David Dufton]

Hi, Guys & Gals,

First may I wish each and everyone of you a HAPPY, HEALTHY and PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!

O.K. so I am shouting, but it is worth shouting about and I bet most of you made a lot of noise at midnight last night.

I have some good news for you - my Vista laptop is running again - thanks to all who gave me suggestions / tips /ideas without your help I would not have been able to recover the system.

I did not want to re-install Vista as this would have meant losing all my documents. However I found a back-up hidden in my last back-up and here were my folders and files. Nothing else seemed to work except to copy files to a flash drive and slowly, with some mistakes, I recovered all except two files - one I can re-create, the other is lost forever.

Once I had these documents safe on the PC and second laptop I was prepared to try the recovery disc. This went well if slowly until I reached a stage where I had to select drivers to reload and I did not know which to load.

A long shot paid off, I selected them all with a couple being rejected as out of date and after a total time of over two hours I was up and running again.

I now have to load the programs take another backup and system restore and will then start moving files.

Thanks once again for your help in solving this problem.


David Dufton