Windows 7 - BOOTMGR is missing

Question

I have 4 drives (2 SATA 1TB and 2 older IDE 100GB). I disconnected power to the two small IDE because I heard clicking noises from one of them (probably HD failure).  The Main Windows 7 Ultimate 1 TB drive never booted up again saying BOOTMGR is missing (immediately after Verifying DMI Pool Data .....). 

I booted to an old Vista OS on the secondary 1 TB drive, and saw that it automounted the main Windows 7 drive just fine, and I changed owner and attributes to the user directory so I could copy off all my data to a 3TB USB backup drive just in case.  (Done)  The Windows 7 1 TB Drive was not set as Active so I right clicked to set as Active, powered down, disconnected the second 1 TB (old vista) drive and attempted to bootup.  FAIL with the same message "BOOTMGR is missing". 

I then put the original Windows 7 Ultimate install CD in, booted to it, selected English, selected repair tools, and it offered to attempt to correct the boot problem automatically. I said Yes, it finished, I rebooted and FAIL.  Same error. 

Next I went back into the RE dos prompt and tried “bootrec /FixMbr”, reboot, still FAIL.  Went back in RE did fixmbr again, this time followed up by “bootrec /fixboot”.  Reboot, FAIL again.  Went back to RE, backed up the original BCD, removed the -s -h -r attributes and ran “bootrec /RebuildBcd”.  It successfully found my WINDOWS installation on C: as expected, and I hit Y let it configure for it.  Rebooted, FAIL yet again, same error.  The harddrive mounts and transfers data between drives as a secondary just fine, no speed issues, no errors, no clicking or noise, so I dont think the drive is failing, and the controller seems fine. But nothing I've tried so far has repaired the BOOTMGR, so im still locked out of my Windows 7 computer.  It will not boot.

What should I try next?  What could this problem be?  I'm running out of ideas and hope a professional in the community can shed some light on the real solution.  If am really hoping my last idea doesnt have to happen, because there is no guarantee it will work, and reinstalling the OS (or reformatting and reinstalling) will lose all my data (requiring a massive data restoration process) lose all installed programs (requiring finding or buying original disks again and the time and effort to reinstall and configure everything), and of course the time and effort to reinstall windows is no small issue either. 

Nothing indicates a hardware issue with the drive, but i ran the 5 hour process to chkdsk /f/ /r itanyway, just for the rare case, since nothing else has worked.  No bad file records, nothing recovered, file system checked and found no problems, and 0 bad sectors.  Its a good drive! 

There must be a way to solve this, to fix windows to boot again.  After all, all I did was power down, unplug a couple old drives, and power back up again. 

Does anyone have any ideas or safe steps I could try next to fix Windows 7 to boot again?  Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi,

Thank you choosing Microsoft community.

I can understand the frustration when things don't work as expected.

I will do my best to help you fix this issue.

The most common reason for BOOTMGR is missing include the boot files responsible for booting the operating system are either corrupted or missing. Another reason is if the computer is trying to boot from a hard drive or flash drive which is not configured properly.

I suggest you to follow the methods provided on the below KB article and see if it fixes the issue.

Windows error message "Bootmgr is missing Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"

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http://support2.microsoft.com/kb/2622803

Hope this resolves the issue. If the issue persists, you can write to us and we will be glad to assist you further.