bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force

• Marked as answer by Vivian Xing Monday, October 12, 2009 6:09 AM
• Unmarked as answer by Blackswordca Thursday, October 15, 2009 5:23 AM

Before going any further, I would like to know what error appears when starting the computer. You can try Check Disk command as below:

C:

CHKDSK /R

Please also run the following command:

• Marked as answer by Vivian Xing Friday, October 16, 2009 2:53 AM

Before going any further, I would like to know what error appears when starting the computer. You can try Check Disk command as below:

C:

CHKDSK /R

Please also run the following command:

Bcdboot C:\windows

NOTE: Replace C with the drive letter where the system is installed.

BOOTREC /FIXMBR

BOOTREC /FIXBOOT

BOOTREC /REBUILDBCD

BOOTREC /SCANOS

If any error appear, please let us know.

Before going any further, I would like to know what error appears when starting the computer. You can try Check Disk command as below:

C:

CHKDSK /R

Please also run the following command:

Bcdboot C:\windows

NOTE: Replace C with the drive letter where the system is installed.

BOOTREC /FIXMBR

BOOTREC /FIXBOOT

BOOTREC /REBUILDBCD

BOOTREC /SCANOS

If any error appear, please let us know.

• Marked as answer by Vivian Xing Monday, November 23, 2009 2:47 AM

• Proposed as answer by Patrick Tam Sunday, June 20, 2010 3:25 AM

Before going any further, I would like to know what error appears when starting the computer. You can try Check Disk command as below:

 

C:

CHKDSK /R

 

Please also run the following command:

 

Bcdboot C:\windows

 

NOTE: Replace C with the drive letter where the system is installed.

 

BOOTREC /FIXMBR

BOOTREC /FIXBOOT

BOOTREC /REBUILDBCD

BOOTREC /SCANOS

If any error appear, please let us know.

 

I THINK I FOUND A SOLUTION

For me I had 2 installations, vista and windows 7, I got rid of vista and got these errors EXACTLY as described above.

Then after 5 hours I noticed something funny... in gparted my windows 7 hard disk wasn't flagged as boot, I added the flag.

And I booted it up getting the error "Bootmgr missing press ctrl alt delete". I went into recovery again and it found my windows 7 installation and it fixed all of the errors, and it started up fine.

So the steps I took to fix it was:

1: Boot into gparted

2: Right click on partition with windows

3: Flag as boot

4: Run windows recovery to fix any other errors (using startup repair, and sometimes when it scans for OS's it repairs automatically)

5: Enjoy

• Proposed as answer by Peeth Sunday, July 11, 2010 8:08 PM

• Proposed as answer by Aldo Antignano Friday, April 05, 2013 12:44 PM

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Windows startup recovery should now work.

• Proposed as answer by Yitzhak Steinmetz (MSFT) Sunday, May 16, 2010 4:12 PM

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Windows startup recovery should now work.

 
BOOTREC /FIXMBR
BOOTREC /FIXBOOT
BOOTREC /REBUILDBCD
BOOTREC /SCANOS

stuff did it also for me... now my only problem is that on the startup i get one more instance of Win7 listed, allthough i didn't install one... what happened?

• Proposed as answer by IDunnoAtal Wednesday, April 11, 2012 12:53 PM
• Unproposed as answer by IDunnoAtal Wednesday, April 11, 2012 12:53 PM

Does not work for me.

I had to repair a Server 2008 R2.
I tried everything (bcdedit, boot, bootrec, diskpart....) but I got the same errors as written above.
Here is how I solved it:

- Boot from Server 2008 R2 DVD
- Choose a new installation (ignore the warning about the "window.old" folder)
- ATTENTION! Cancel the installation progress after the first installation-point is finished (copying the system-files).
- Restart
- Boot a Windows 7 Recovery DVD
- Do a system restore
- Done

Only your solution works for me. Thanks.

I haven't tried system restore, but startup recovery also did the job.

Thank you Kevon,

This fixed my problem. You've saved me from a few hours of work. I appreciate the input.

I THINK I FOUND A SOLUTION

For me I had 2 installations, vista and windows 7, I got rid of vista and got these errors EXACTLY as described above.

Then after 5 hours I noticed something funny... in gparted my windows 7 hard disk wasn't flagged as boot, I added the flag.

And I booted it up getting the error "Bootmgr missing press ctrl alt delete". I went into recovery again and it found my windows 7 installation and it fixed all of the errors, and it started up fine.

 

So the steps I took to fix it was:

1: Boot into gparted

2: Right click on partition with windows

3: Flag as boot

4: Run windows recovery to fix any other errors (using startup repair, and sometimes when it scans for OS's it repairs automatically)

5: Enjoy

Thx mate, u saved my bro life!!

Thanks very much.

The type of the file system is NTFS.
Cannot lock current drive.
Windows cannot run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected.

I didn't see anyone followup with what to do if chkdsk -r returns an error. Could this be part of why the recovery is failing? I'm running as Administrator in a CMD window through the Windows 7 "System Recovery Options."

Thanks to all for their contributions to this post. Very illuminating.

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Windows startup recovery should now work.

This Did the trick!!

• Proposed as answer by jh1507 Friday, October 22, 2010 11:24 AM

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Windows startup recovery should now work.

I THINK I FOUND A SOLUTION

For me I had 2 installations, vista and windows 7, I got rid of vista and got these errors EXACTLY as described above.

Then after 5 hours I noticed something funny... in gparted my windows 7 hard disk wasn't flagged as boot, I added the flag.

And I booted it up getting the error "Bootmgr missing press ctrl alt delete". I went into recovery again and it found my windows 7 installation and it fixed all of the errors, and it started up fine.

 

So the steps I took to fix it was:

1: Boot into gparted

2: Right click on partition with windows

3: Flag as boot

4: Run windows recovery to fix any other errors (using startup repair, and sometimes when it scans for OS's it repairs automatically)

5: Enjoy

Despite doing all the things before this post, after doing this by booting into 9.10 Ubuntu, i was able to mark as flagged, boot, then boot into the system disc Windows 7 DVD install Disc, Startup Repair (1st time allows it to detect the the boot flag and correct, it will restart one time, do this and boot from CD/DVD again) ...When in the setup , choose the Startup Repair, your installation should now be shown in the List, click next and do startup repair, and VOILA, restart number 2 and it's working. 

Brilliant, Takes LINUX to fix Windows.  Amas all the fixes listed before this and on all the other forums, none of those worked.  This is indeed a true fix.

Thanks.

Osirus

/fixmbr- completed successfully

/fixboot- same as above

/rebuildbcd-0 instalations found

/scano- 0 instalations found

i had windows vista installed till it came up with bootmanager missing or corrupt and have tried all the bootrec and codes?

I THINK I FOUND A SOLUTION

For me I had 2 installations, vista and windows 7, I got rid of vista and got these errors EXACTLY as described above.

Then after 5 hours I noticed something funny... in gparted my windows 7 hard disk wasn't flagged as boot, I added the flag.

And I booted it up getting the error "Bootmgr missing press ctrl alt delete". I went into recovery again and it found my windows 7 installation and it fixed all of the errors, and it started up fine.

 

So the steps I took to fix it was:

1: Boot into gparted

2: Right click on partition with windows

3: Flag as boot

4: Run windows recovery to fix any other errors (using startup repair, and sometimes when it scans for OS's it repairs automatically)

5: Enjoy

This was it!! I had to mark it as "BOOT" using gparted (manage flags option) and then used the Windows 7 DVD - auto repair option. Had to do the auto repair a couple of times though. 

Just to help anyone in the future who finds this thread,

"Element not found" error seems to mean that there's no boot partition set. (Diskpart calls it an "active" partition).  bcdedit and bootrec /rebuildbcd will give an "element not found" error until you set an active partition.

Once you set an active partition, bcdedit and bootrec /buildbcd and bootrec /fixboot will all work, but bootrec /scanos shows 0 installations.   Help file says ScanOS shows installations that are not included in BCD, so I guess that's as documented although doesn't particularly make sense to me.

My experience is with Server 2008R2. YMMV.

Lee

I've tried all of these so called solutions and my Vista is still coming up with: Bootmgr is missing.  I've been working on this off and on for a few weeks.  My laptop had an internal recovery setup and I can't get to that any longer.  I downloaded a backup Vista and it gets me to the recovery portion, but each time I go through the cmd prompts nothing ever changes.

Help

Thanks Vivian,

[my 2008R2 machine is an ex-Citrix Xen 5 VM which has been migreated to Hyper-V using Xen Kensho]

BCDBOOT C:\WINDOWS helped me get the machine to attempt to boot to the OS again instead of giving up looking for an OS and going straight to the recovery console.  On the next boot it gave me a meaningful error which was related to a driver that had become corrupted file: scsifilt.sys in my case

From there I was able to boot into Safe Mode, and then normally into Windows.  I have replaced the driver file with a known good version and all appears to be well again.

Cheers, Jason

i chose the diskpart method and it did some progress although when i used the recovery tool it said that windows can't repart and now i'm getting a new error

bootmgr is missing 

IF YOU HAVENT TRIED ALL THE BOOTREC OPTIONS... DO THOSE FIRST AND EVERYTHING LISTED HERE.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392/en-gb

Krazyq - read over this whole page again.  Setting the disk as boot will help.  I wasnt even able to get the "bootmgr is missing" warning at first. So consider yourself halfway there.

This all started when one of my 3 hard drives melted (had old windows 7 install and documents on it.)  oh sweet mary that sucks!!! I have lost a lost of info but I still was able to read the other 2 hard drives. So I started by turning my computer on with the main HD I had with windows 7 installed. It didnt boot.  It just said - insert boot media or boot from proper media etc...

I tried all the bootrec and other options but it this is what should work for you!

You shouldnt have to download gparted because these settings should do the same thing. (from above)

- Enter repair mode and goto the command prompt. 

- enter these commands

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

If this doesnt work you can try gparted (as i did)

As mentioned above:

1: Boot into gparted    (it's an .iso file you can burn to a cd and use as boot disk. Really cool program. http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ )

1.5: press "enter/return" through all the questions until you get the dialogue box showing your partitions

2: Right click on partition with windows

2.5: manage flags

3: Flag as boot

4: exit program and remove disk

After booting back up with the Windows 7 Disk and going back to repair. It still didnt show the installation. But I tried to repair by the first option listed again. (startup repair)

Now it will restart and you must BOOT BACK INTO THE DISK!! Now do those steps all over again.

AND AGAIN. 

It finally listed my installation and I was able to repair and boot up properly.

Using DISKPART to set the active partition was the key for me.

After that change, it took two cycles through the Windows Repair disk to get things back and running. 

Thanks for the sanity guys.

When i typed "BOOTREC /FIXBOOT" I received the "Element not found" error. when i did a diskpart, and listed the volumes, i noticed that the 100MB Partition was missing.

I Repaired this by booting with a windows 7 DVD and ran the auto recovery. It recreated the 100MB Partition and the server booted into windows server 2008 R2.

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Windows startup recovery should now work.

MY MAN, thank you!

I was doing some diagnosis on someones computer, when i plugged their SATA drive onto my chain of SATAs. This was the boot drive from the other computer, and since windows wouldnt load properly i wanted to check if the disk was faulty. Either way, i plugged it in, and obviously some nasty things happend. It tried to boot from the other computers boot sector, and that completely f-ed up my original boot. I was just getting "insert proper boot media and restart" or something like that. I almost threw my computer out of the window trying to fix this, but after doing this i was finally getting the "bootmgr.exe is missing", and i knew i was saved, because ive run into that one a couple times before.

After doing this and some spamming of the fixmbr/boot everything worked. Thanks man, i love you!

Excellent. This worked for me..I was doing a p2v on my windows 7 disk and on the original machine this partition was never bootable.

Steps as you say - booted from my windows 7 disk

installed a new copy of windows until second option "extracting windows files..(or similar)." 

force rebooted the machine

then ran the fixmbr, fixboot rebuildbcd commands

then rebooted on my windows 7 disk and i could select the windows install and selected repair startup.

job done :-)

This way will work for everyone:

Boot from your Windows 7 Installation DVD then go to Repair. First select Command Prompt and type following commands:

Diskpart  (hit Enter each time)

List disk 

select disk 0 (the Disk that Windows installed) 

list partition 

select partition 1 (The partition that Windows installed) 

active 

exit.

Than go to Start Up Repair. First time Windows may ask you to reboot your machine. Boot your computer on Windows Installation DVD again. Select Repair than Start Up Repair. Now Windows RE should be list your windows operation system. Highlight it and click Next.

Now you have your working Windows back. ;)

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Windows startup recovery should now work.

Nothing else worked for me but your solution.  Although gparted showed the drive not flagged as boot, even after flagging it the problem persisted.

Nice to know the Windows RE has ALL the tools needed.

To add... after making the Diskpart change and rebooting, I found that if I did NOT remove the CD/DVD and then just ignored the "press any key to boot CD/DVD" message ... I would get the "Bootmgr missing".  However, pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL resulting in a reboot as expected but then the CD just booted immediately and did NOT see the hard drive.

So I turned off the computer and booted withOUT the CD in the drive so I got the "Disk Boot Failure" again.  THEN I put the CD/DVD in the drive and booted it that way.  With this method, the hard drive was seen and running a "Startup Repair" fix the bootloader.  Reviewing the details before rebooting, it said the bootloader was missing and successfully repaired the problem.

Rebooted without the CD in the drive and ... the universe is back in balance.  =)

Thank you Thank you Thank you!!

• Proposed as answer by ozesport Saturday, July 16, 2011 1:48 AM

I have just spent some time with the problem with the "Element not found" error.

The issue seemed to resolve to a faulty hard disk sector where the BCD is stored.

The Microsoft documentation is not explicit about where the bcd store is physically located.  It is not a file, and it appears to be is stored directly onto a disk sector, similar to the MBR.

This error occurs when the BCD is written back to the disk media, and relates to a sector write failure, probably because the disk sector is damaged.

I was not game to play around reformatting sectors because I had an OS and data which I wanted to recover, so I did the following:

1.  Put the disk into another machine and use Acronis to clone the data onto a brand new disk, using a SATA cable directly to the mainboard, not USB.

2.  Reboot on the cloned disk.  In my case it would appear that Acronis had created a new bcd, because it go past the "black screen" hang.

3.  Use the repair option on the Windows 7 CD to "fix" the install.  I had a "BOOTMGR missing" error.

4.  And "Roberts your mother's brother" the system booted again.

There is also a great little utility "EasyBCD" which makes managing the BCD a lot easier, but I am not sure of it will run from windows repair command console.

Hope this is helpful

I screwed up installing linux at 2am on my dev machine (like the usual). I just get a blank screen when booting

It totally work for me. Thanks alot!!!!

I'd like to add my experience with this.

I have a multi-boot setup between Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

Due to some history and shuffling hard drives in my system, Hard drive 0 contains Windows 2008 R2 Server, but no boot files, and Hard drive 1 contains Windows 7 as an active boot partition, with the boot files etc, etc, etc. There are also a Hard drive 2 and 3 in the system for storage.

Unfortunately, hard drive 1, the one containing Windows 7, crashed. I had files backed up, and since I really did not need the Windows 7 install any more and I was happy to keep using Windows Server 2008 R2 as the main OS on that box, I physically replaced the hard drive with a new one. Of course, then I found out that Server 2008 R2 would not boot. No boot files, no nothing, which would make absolute sense since these were on the crashed drive.

So I got to work using some of the tips on this thread. Tried pretty much everything previously suggested in the thread, and the *ONLY* thing that worked, was a "fake reinstall" as suggested by TomPiXX on Tuesday, December 08, 2009 6:36 AM - I would get the "element not found" on all commands trying to re-build the boot files, non of the bootrec  commands worked.

In short, this is what I did:

- Inserted Windows 2008 R2 DVD.
- Proceeded with an install on the new, 2nd, replaced hard drive as a NEW install next to the one on the 1st hard drive.
- As soon as the first step was done (Copying System Files....) and it had moved on to "Extracting Windows Files....", I did a physical reset with the reset button.
- When booting again, I noticed it would now say "BOOTREC not found, press CTRL ALT DEL".
- Booted in Server 2008 R2 DVD again, this time chose "Repair".
- It did not find the installed windows, but this time I was able to use the command prompt, and follow instructions re: DISKPART and BOOTREC mentioned above, and behold: Windows 2008 R2 booted in its wonderful self again. :)
- Reformatted the 2nd hard drive to wipe it clean of any remnants of a failed windows install, and my system is back in business.

BRILLIANT! Thank you so much for this. A unique problem indeed, but we both had the same result!

I can't thank you enough.

Cheers from USA

I screwed up installing linux at 2am on my dev machine (like the usual). I just get a blank screen when booting

 

It totally work for me. Thanks alot!!!!

I've had the same problem with starting Windows 7 (actually never at starting up, but with reactivating from sleep-mode - every time with such problems). The normal repair utility from boot-CD didn't work.
The first time repairing the bootloader didn't work (bootrec/fixboot element not found), so I tried the solution with diskpart, which worked.

Now it doesn't work any more; a Windows installation is found (the only and former working one), but definitely no bootloader. Now and then the message "bootmgr missing  press ctrl+alt+del" appears, now and then the "normal nothing" of a completly missing bootloader. The Gpartet-idea didn't work, either (I just see the booting device flagged as booting device -.-)

I didn't change the computer nor I installed or deinstalled any programs, drivers or whatever.

I normally run daily a anti-virus-check with "Malwarebytes Antimalware" by Malwarebytes and "AntiVir" by Avira, additionaly the Windows firewall.
The last days there weren't any bad programs or similar found.

What can I do repairing the PC?

Thanks for helping!

(Is there maybe a specialist speaking German? :D )

can some of  the expers from here take a look at mi thread

ive tryed some of these things and no success

Boot Tricky Problem

sorry for the intervention

Gparted worked well for me too.

Prior to running gparted I ran fixboot and fixmbr in the Windows Recovery console with no luck.

I then came across this post and tried the gparted live boot cd.

I did NOT have a bad flag, but rather an extra partition that was unallocated. I used gparted to expand my primary partition and remove the unallocated. Upon reboot, I did not get this error anymore.

did this

BOOTREC /FIXMBR - operation completed successfully

BOOTREC /FIXBOOT - element not found

BOOTREC /REBUILDBCD - It finds my installation, and when I try to add it to boot list it says element not found.

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Recovery finds the drive and attempts to fix startup, upon reboot MBR MISSING.

final solution was

• bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup
• c:
• cd boot
• attrib bcd -s -h -r
• ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
• bootrec /RebuildBcd

You may need to do steps 1 and 2 or 3 Like I did

DISKPART (ACTIVATE PARTITION)

BOOTREC (AUTO REBUILD)

BCEDIT (MANUAL REBUILD)

your steps helped and worked.

I downloaded gparted and changed the boot partition flag. and rebooted and it worked immediatly.

WOW! thank you

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Windows startup recovery should now work.

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Windows startup recovery should now work.

This was the magic incantation that fixed my issues, migrating a windows 7 installation from the default laptop overly partitioned hard drive to a new ssd drive with a single partition...

I was getting quite frustrated till I tried this...

Oh yes, the partition was "1" , not 0, but I think that's been pointed out before.  Also, I had to reboot a few times more, going through the wonderful recovery cd "experience", but after the next reboot, I had hope as at least the Windows RE system _saw_ the windows 7 installation....

2 or 3 more reboots, and Win7 came back alive!

Thanks!

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Windows startup recovery should now work.

You could install EasyBCD and remove one of the Windows 7 Entries You can download it Here. Then you scroll to the bottom and click "Download free for limited, non-commercial use". Then if you need help there are lots of tutorials on youtube for it.

My touchpad of my laptop messed up and proposed your comment as an answer. Sorry. :(

• Edited by IDunnoAtal Wednesday, April 11, 2012 12:58 PM

Hi I have the same issue, the below command works for me.... Thanks!!!

Bcdboot C:\windows

NOTE: Replace C with the drive letter where the system is installed.

BOOTREC /FIXMBR

BOOTREC /FIXBOOT

BOOTREC /REBUILDBCD

Nice work.

I was wondering why my Windows 98 disk wasn't activating the correct partition!!

Plus I did all those other things as well..........

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Windows startup recovery should now work.

Thank you for this! This combined with rebuildbcd got me my system back!

Thanks again.

I f*cking love you so much.

Thanks you man, thank you.

That "Bcdboot C:\windows" line was what I needed in my case.

Thanks, worked for me and everything is alright now.

I was trying to dual boot ubuntu 12.04 with win 7 and after ubuntu failed to setup the MBR I installed plop bootmanager and after a couple of bootings to ubuntu live and win 7 and .... win 7 boot stopped working. Plop uninstall wasn't accessible because win 7 boot manager didn't start at all. First I used a win 7 usb installation (I have a netbook with no optical drives) to repair the MBR. And then I did exactly what Aklem described. Now win 7 boots like new!

If this did not work for you and you still cannot get anywhere (which I had the problem after trying everything in this thread), I found a trick.

Run the following command in WinRE.

bcdboot c:\Windows /s c: /l en-us

Change "c:" if Windows is installed on another drive. This is what got windows booting for me.

This really worked for me! Thanks.

Thanks Aklem, Kavon, and all other,

a prior installation of Vista was installed on the harddisk I tried to removed, so my Windows 7 partition was not set as 'Active'.

The solution was as mentioned:

First: Start with W7 DVD and select the command line

Diskpart

LIST DISK
SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)
LIST PARTITION
SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)
ACTIVE
EXIT

Second:

Bcdboot C:\windows

BOOTREC /FIXMBR

BOOTREC /FIXBOOT

THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!

Cheers from Germany

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Windows startup recovery should now work.

This, combined with the suggestion above to swap the SATA cables, worked for me.

Perhaps swapping the cables reset something in the BIOS that allowed the new boot database to be built and recognized?

Thanks a lots Vivian for straight forward instructions.

It is works for me.

BOOTREC /FIXBOOT give me error because I have to BCD files at that time but when I run BOOTREC /REBUILDBCD it comes.

Regards

I got about 80% through this thread before I observed that the partition I was trying to fix lacked ANY boot files on the root, so after trying EVERYTHING in this thread EXCEPT the 'Bcdboot C:\windows' suggestion, as I apparently missed it when first mentioned way above, I did this (oh yeah, be sure to set operating system files and hidden files as visible):

- Compared a healthyOS installs root to the partition I wanted fixed

- copied these files over from the healthy OS partition root to the root of the partition im trying to fix:

-- BOOTSECT.BAK, autoexec.bat, bootmgr, config.sys, grldr, IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, netsplit.ini

- I re-set the drive I'm trying to fix as boot and after seeing an odd vista like loading screen IT WORKED!

- I suspect the bcdboot c:\windows does similar things, but If you have issues, the steps above give little question about whats being done to fixed it.

Background: I was using another drive to boot from, which then let me boot to my OS, but then that drive with the proper boot died and I was left with an OS with zero boot data in every way. kinda explains why the files were missing to such a point.

• Edited by Corosus Monday, July 29, 2013 4:31 PM added background info

after doing all the steps u mentioned above, i tried to install win in a drive and after that a step"getting files ready for installation"  gets stuck at zero percent..

help

• Edited by hmdmhdfmhdjmzdtjmzdtzktdkztdjz Sunday, August 04, 2013 5:07 PM fixed GRUB link

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Windows startup recovery should now work.

• Edited by Dealdrick Friday, August 16, 2013 12:56 PM

The most important part of this puzzle for me was actually in the previous reply in this long thread.  I also had 2 disks in my system and was stuck endlessly trying to get all the earlier solutions to work.  When I disconnected the second (non-OS) disk and left only the disk containing the Windows 7 installation attached, booting from my Windows repair CD finally recognized the Windows installation and repaired it.

Lesson:  Step #1 should be disconnecting all non-OS disks from the system

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Windows startup recovery should now work.

I THINK I FOUND A SOLUTION

For me I had 2 installations, vista and windows 7, I got rid of vista and got these errors EXACTLY as described above.

Then after 5 hours I noticed something funny... in gparted my windows 7 hard disk wasn't flagged as boot, I added the flag.

And I booted it up getting the error "Bootmgr missing press ctrl alt delete". I went into recovery again and it found my windows 7 installation and it fixed all of the errors, and it started up fine.

 

So the steps I took to fix it was:

1: Boot into gparted

2: Right click on partition with windows

3: Flag as boot

4: Run windows recovery to fix any other errors (using startup repair, and sometimes when it scans for OS's it repairs automatically)

5: Enjoy

In my case, after doing all of these, I get error whilw booting -could not read "/EFI/microsoft/boot/bcd" 

bootrec /scanos switch displays the windows volume, but when try to rebuild, it tells EFI partitions cannot be done by this command.

Any advice?

You are the man!

Very good advice if 100mb partition was destroyed. This way system will create 100mb partition in default place. To change default place please check post with ... LIST DISK ... LIST PARTITION ... ACTIVE. Good luck!

bootrec /fixboot is giving error

Element not found.

Would really appreciate if you could give some pointers.

Thanks.

Hello,

"Element not found" should refer to bootrec not finding an active partition

Try using parted to select the right partition and activate it

I just solved my problem in another way..
non of the above solutions helped me.. kept saying in rebuildbcd, that the total ammount of windows installations found was: 0

I moved the sata cable to another port,.. that fixed the problem for me..

might help others

Anders

I tried this first as it would be the fastest solution.

And it was ;) fixed in 5min, Thanks

managed to fix without the boot partition on the same harddrive.

My scenerio was that the boot partition was located on the hard disk where windows was installed on. It was located on a hard drive that I removed.

The following steps fixed it for me with JUST MS WINDOWS, MEDIA

1. Start up windows 7 cd and go to recovery mode, if your harddisk is not detected that means it is not active and therefore it won't boot, open a command prompt and use diskpart to make your partition active. after it is made active reboot your computer

2. Start the repair mode again on the cd. it will now detect your drive and do a repair, let it finish and restart.

3. Start the cd once more in repair mode go to the repair steps again and do a startup repair. After this is done reboot and Windows will start up. 

You may be trying to run it from the same drive you're trying to check.

Run CHKDSK from another drive:

X:\Sources>CHKDSK C: /R

Diskpart can also be used to mark the partition as active from the Windows RE.

Diskpart

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Windows startup recovery should now work.

I had a HD that was acting like there was nothing on it at all during boot up. My BIOS could see it and when I connected it to another computer I could see all the files present and open and modify them. I tried using the bootrec.exe tools  to fix my master boot record but they didn't seem to do anything. 'bootrec /rebuildbcd' was telling me that it 'identified Windows installation:1' but after selecting Y or A (Yes, ALL) it simply told me, 'Element not found'. 

It appears 'Element not found' was telling me that my HD partition was not set to 'ACTIVE'. The Diskpart instructions worked perfectly. Windows Recovery Environment could now see the HD and go to town fixing it for me.  THANKS Kevon Walcott

• Edited by washersp 2 hours 17 minutes ago

My problem came from a combo of a failed linux install and a mistake in EasyBCD.  When I wanted to choose wich OS to repair, I saw none in the list, and the bootrec comands were no use.  When I looked into diskpart, i found that my two hard drives had been reassigned (disk0 became disk1 and disk1 became disk0).  I had to remove my second hard drive and run the repair, and before I had a chance to select it, WindowsRE told me I had startup issues and offered to repair.  After successfully booting into windows, I shut down, put my 2nd drive back in, and everything works fine.