How To Manually Troubleshoot and Repair Windows 7 Bootloader

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079 thumb - How To Manually Troubleshoot and Repair Windows 7 Bootloader Over the years Microsoft has improved their system recovery option for Windows Operating System. You don’t get into serious problem often, unless you are the kind person who wants to risk you machine and play around with different OSs. If you are the kind person have different operating systems natively installed on one single machine tune it right and manage it to able to dual boot, triple boot or even quad boot will be a complicated task. I happen to encounter this boot issue today when I try to install the latest Hackintosh on my laptop. Yes there are ways you can run Mac inside a VMWare, however often application crashes inside VM which makes it almost impossible to make a use out of it.

Here are few tips you can try if the Windows 7 Install/Repair disk doesn’t find the problem and won’t able to fix the boot issue for you.

  1. Boot Windows 7 installation disc in the disc drive, and then start the computer.
  2. Press a key when you are prompted.
  3. Click Repair your computer.
  4. Click the operating system that you want to repair, and then click Next.
  5. In the System Recovery Options dialog box, click Command Prompt.
  6. Type Bootrec.exe, and then press ENTER.

Bootrec.exe options

The Bootrec.exe tool supports the following options. Use the option that is appropriate for your situation. (This works on all versions of Vista and Windows 7 Only)

You can Try the following combination:

Bootrec.exe /FixMbr

The /FixMbr option writes a Windows 7 or Windows Vista-compatible MBR to the system partition. This option does not overwrite the existing partition table. Use this option when you must resolve MBR corruption issues, or when you have to remove non-standard code from the MBR.

Bootrec.exe /FixBoot

The /FixBoot option writes a new boot sector to the system partition by using a boot sector that is compatible with Windows Vista or Windows 7. Use this option if one of the following conditions is true:

  • The boot sector has been replaced with a non-standard Windows Vista or Windows 7 boot sector.
  • The boot sector is damaged.
  • An earlier Windows operating system has been installed after Windows Vista or Windows 7 was installed. In this scenario, the computer starts by using Windows NT Loader (NTLDR) instead of Windows Boot Manager (Bootmgr.exe).

Bootrec.exe /ScanOs

The /ScanOs option scans all disks for installations that are compatible with Windows Vista or Windows 7. Additionally, this option displays the entries that are currently not in the BCD store. Use this option when there are Windows Vista or Windows 7 installations that the Boot Manager menu does not list.

Bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd

The /RebuildBcd option scans all disks for installations that are compatible with Windows Vista or Windows 7. Additionally, this option lets you select the installations that you want to add to the BCD store. Use this option when you must completely rebuild the BCD.

[via Microsoft]

7 COMMENTS

  1. Thank you, sir. I encountered this problem when a fresh install on a new HDD was interrupted. When I attempted a new install, “Bootmgr is missing” popped up. The amount of misinformation on the web is astounding.

    Perhaps the one thing you didn’t include was the necessity of immediately hitting enter when the display says hit any key to boot from CD. The slightest delay, & the Bootmgr error message is displayed & everything locks up. After that, your instructions about the Bootrec tool are excellent- the /FixBoot command worked perfectly. Thanks again.

  2. Well, after installing Windows 7 freshly, while reinstalling the original OS that came on the computer, Windows Vista, I was unable to reinstall it, until I deleted the Windows 7 boot partition. I was unable to boot Windows 7 though, to get it to show up on the boot menu I has to use EasyBCD, but Windows 7 had some BCD problems, related to windows signature, Now I knew the hole time that it was a problem with the only boot partition being the Vista boot partition, I just didn’t know how to have both boot partitions. After trying the two FixMBR and FixBoot, it still didn’t start up, but it did say a different thing related to a signature problem, the problem being with winload.exe.

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