So here is the scenario. I had a computer with 2 drives. OS was originally installed on drive A and drive B was just a blank data drive. Few years later drive A died so I reformatted and installed OS on drive B. However, what happened was that the boot manager stayed on drive A and I did not know of this until now. The OS is installed on drive B, though. Anyways, drive A is COMPLETELY dead now. The computer would shut off immediately when I have drive A plugged in; therefore, the boot manager is dead with it. Now I have drive B with an OS and no boot manager. What do I do? I don't want to reformat again. Is there a way I can recreate the boot manager on this drive somehow? This is urgent and I appreciate any help I can get. Thanks.
I tried with the Windows 7 disc already. The boot manager doesn't exist so the current installation doesn't even show up on the list of OS's to repair. I can't change it into an active partition because my boot manager doesn't exist. I can't boot into the OS to change it...
1. Boot the recovery DVD and click "Repair your computer". 2. In the dialog-box titled "System Recovery Options", click "Command Prompt" and type in the following command: Code: Bootrec.exe /REBUILDBCD If the command is successful, close the Command Prompt window. 3. Click “Startup Repair” to perform Windows Startup Repair.
OK looks like I got it. I had to first set the current partition to active through command prompt then I was able to use the bootrec.exe /fixboot, /fixmbr, and /rebuildbcd with no problem. Then I started getting the BOOTMGR not found error so I used the regular repair tool from the Windows 7 disc. After that I started getting BSOD's so I tried system restore and went back 5 days then it worked. Thanks to everyone in this thread for giving me ideas which lead me in the right direction.