BOOTMGR is missing in Windows Server 2008 R2
I have tried putting the dvd in and then running the recovery console via the command prompt. I only have the options for "system Image Recovery", "Windows Memory Diagnostic" and Command Prompt. I ran Bootrec /RebuildBcd, Bootrec /FixMbr and Bootrec /FixBoot None of it works and I still get the error. How do I fix this (I have no windows restore point)? and How do I get it to automatically create restore points? It is a Virtual machine and the only snapshot is with windows is open, but when restarted it still has the issue. Is there a way to solve the issue from inside windows itself?
October 21st, 2009 10:34am

Thanks this works !!!
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November 13th, 2009 12:57pm

Thanks guys for your help.... It worked!!!!!
January 3rd, 2010 8:31pm

Thank you so much. Worked for me.
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May 11th, 2010 1:04pm

Hey Guys....I had the same issue, It came up after I did windows update (June/10/2010) I went into the repair mode as mentioned below using the Windows 2K8R2 CD but could not locate the Boot or BCD folder, Also it did not see any Windows OS installed on any of the partition. So I just jumped ahead and booted using Win-7 Ultimate X64 CD and did a repair. It said that an error was found and rectified and needed a reboot. After reboot I could see the OS in the list. I clicked next and selected the Windows Fix option. A quick reboot after that and I was good to go!!
June 10th, 2010 1:53pm

IMPDP...could you provide the specific windows update from 6/10/2010 that you say caused the bootmgr issue for you? I belive we ran into the same thing and would like to pinpoint the cause.
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June 16th, 2010 2:00pm

Genius - my bacon saved thanks JPorche!
July 6th, 2010 5:53pm

Thanks, George ur the man!:-)
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July 8th, 2010 8:11am

thanks, my problem replication software error... Lucas Moreno
July 12th, 2010 9:05pm

Hey Guys....I had the same issue, It came up after I did windows update (June/10/2010) I went into the repair mode as mentioned below using the Windows 2K8R2 CD but could not locate the Boot or BCD folder, Also it did not see any Windows OS installed on any of the partition. So I just jumped ahead and booted using Win-7 Ultimate X64 CD and did a repair. It said that an error was found and rectified and needed a reboot. After reboot I could see the OS in the list. I clicked next and selected the Windows Fix option. A quick reboot after that and I was good to go!! IMPDP can I just say that I LOVE YOU MAN!! You just saved my bacon with that little fix. I had a production server that wasn't booting and I didn't have the boot folder like you mentioned, but your suggested fix worked perfectly!! I had other options like using my backups to restore the server, but I really didn't want to go there. You saved me a load of time and since I'm in on a Sunday doing this, I really appreciate it!! Thanks again.
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September 5th, 2010 6:30am

I've been having this problema and i've tried all the options and still getting the BOOTMGR missing error, so any steps to take would be very helpful
November 5th, 2010 6:48am

This worked for me. Many thanks
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November 23rd, 2010 4:10pm

Hi, Ran into the same problem and tried all the "recommended" fixes. Was 100% sure that the install was ok but it was just something with the boot setup and nothing recommended worked... After doing a bunch of testing and reading put a combination of suggestions together and this is what worked for me. You will need a Windows 7 x64 DVD. 1. Boot from your Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 DVD. 2. Repair 3. Command Prompt Note: I only had one drive and that drive was set for C: as the boot so the setup was fairly basic... if your setup is more complex you may want to consider this a bit more... but it should still work. 4. rename c:\boot\BCD bcd.old : this will backup your bcd file just in case you want it. 5. Delete c:\boot\bcd 6. Restart your computer 7. Remove your WS2008R2 DVD and install the W7x64 DVD. 8. Boot from the DVD and do a repair. 9. It will offer to repair automatically accept. 10. Reboot and this is the "trick" boot the DVD again and do a repair. Keep doing this process until it does not find anything wrong. 11. Your server should boot again. Good luck. George George This helped me greatly. I don't even know what happened. All I did was reboot from a windows update. Why didn't they include the repair tools that's in Windows 7 DVD in the Windows Server Disks?
January 10th, 2011 4:53am

This fixed it for me, thanks Irish Chris!
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February 7th, 2011 9:50am

This worked for me! Thank you very much!
February 7th, 2011 2:12pm

Thank you so much! Stupid me, I made that exact mistake.
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February 13th, 2011 1:55am

This, in conjunction with the Diskpart/mark active suggestion above fixed my problem. I got into my corner through an unusual path though, so I thought I post it here for future search users to hopefully find. I wanted to install SBS 2011 (based on 2008 R2), which I just purchased but didn't yet have the media for. I downloaded SBS from MSDN and extracted it to a spare SATA drive and set BIOS to boot from that. I was installing to a RAID 0 array on a Promise 5805 controller hosting 3 other RAID 5 partitions. The controller and the arrays were detected fine. I let SBS create the partition on the unpartitioned RAID 0 space, and the install went fine too... until I rebooted without the install hard drive in the system. Apparently when booting the install media from a hard drive, Windows failed to mark the SBS drive as Active or to setup the MBR, so that I'd get an "insert valid boot media" type message if I attempted to boot without the install drive plugged in. To fix, I did the following: Remove SBS install drive and boot from from Win7 DVD as indicated above. It ran its repair and rebooted. Booted from Win7 again, ran diskpart, set to active as indicated above. Booted to run Win7 repair, but it said it couldn't repair my version of Windows. Booted SBS install HD, and NOW it could see and repair my boot problems. I suspect I could have short-circuited the above steps if I had figured out earlier that the partition wasn't marked as active and run diskpart from SBS's repair shell, then gone straight to the SBS repair. Still, this thread and the steps above are what ultimately got me to a solution, so thanks! To any would be installers, hoping to install from a hard drive, A - dont'. B - if you do anyway, be sure to check to make sure that your partition is active, and install from your bootable drive from USB rather than SATA or eSATA. On a different machine, I did it that way and didn't have this problem - probably because Windows treats USB drives differently... I dunno.
February 15th, 2011 11:15pm

George, Saved my bacon. Granted it was a DEV / LAB machine, but saved me a good 4 hours of rebuilding.
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March 7th, 2011 5:43pm

JPorche's solution worked like a charm for me... issue resolved in minutes. 1. Boot from your Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 DVD. 2. Repair 3. Command Prompt 4. rename c:\boot\BCD bcd.old 5. Bootrec /RebuildBcd 6. dispart 7. select disk 0 8. select partition 1 (the 100MB partition) 9. active 10. exit 11. reboot server and remove DVD Thanks a lot!
March 8th, 2011 8:07am

hi the same error occurred on the server of the laboratory here where I work, and all the solutions mentioned here, none worked, but I used two commands listed in different solutions that worked, the solution follows from the first command: 1) Bootrec / RebuildBcd 2) Restart the computer Note: make the first two steps until the system appear in the list. 3) Recovery / StartRep.exe Thanks good luck
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April 15th, 2011 10:59am

Worked like a charm. I didn't have to rename the old BCD, I just put in W7 disk, it told me it needed to restart to fix the startup errors and upon restart it booted properly. Thanks for the solution! DELL PE110 / SBS 2008
April 25th, 2011 3:50pm

I know this is an old post but JPorche you just saved my ace. I wanted to thank you for sharing that information, otherwise I might be looking at another career. John
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May 21st, 2011 12:37am

Use a windows 7 CD/DVD it will prompt recocery then recover it ,I have tested it worked !!
June 2nd, 2011 11:25am

I did the same thing, accidentally marked one of the drives as active on a Windows 2008 R2 server. JPorche's solution worked for me. Thank you
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June 2nd, 2011 1:52pm

Thanks George, followed your steps and now I got my server up and running again... Thanks again for your post. Cheers!
July 4th, 2011 4:31am

GeorgePR's Solution worked for me! Thank you so much!
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July 13th, 2011 11:47am

Hi Irish Chris, this worked for me, you saved my time thank you so much.
August 26th, 2011 8:28am

Noel, thanks for mentioning this. This worked for my Dell R710, with one variation: the active partition needed to be #2, the one used by Windows as the system drive (c:). Using partition #1 did boot, but to a DOS-style command prompt :) Thanks again.
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September 22nd, 2011 11:38am

Wow. Thanks. Exactly this was what happened to me too. The mouse was just too closed to the keyboard, moved a bit against the keyboard and accidentially I "clicked" a different drive as active :-) and forgot it until I restarted the machine couple of days later. Your version did it. But I did not need step 4 and 5 ;). Thanks Cheers.
November 1st, 2011 12:30pm

hi the same error occurred on the server of the laboratory here where I work, and all the solutions mentioned here, none worked, but I used two commands listed in different solutions that worked, the solution follows from the first command: 1) Bootrec / RebuildBcd 2) Restart the computer Note: make the first two steps until the system appear in the list. 3) Recovery / StartRep.exe Thanks good luck I had a problem with mountpoints and drive letters being assigned to a NON OS partition (SQL database partitions! - on the surface looked harmless!), however once removed the drive letter from the SQL partitions, the O/S wouldn't boot, got the standard error message "BOOTMGR" missing.. - mounted / attached ISO O/S disk to cdrom and booted from Recovery image - Recovery option - wouldn't list any recognized installed O/S - Dropped to command shell - ran Bootrec /Fixmbr and Bootrec / fixboot - rebooted - same problem, BOOTMGR not found - Repair again, this time it 'found' the O/S - Dropped to command Shell, and went from x:\Sources to x:\Sources\Recovery - ran StartRep.exe This ran successfully and on reboot - FIXED the O/S Previous to this did various items like: removed other SAN LUN's assigned to the image (4) - no change delete image reference, and re-imported it - no change create new vmware image, and use existing image location - no change VERY pleased that the recovery StartRep.exe worked and allowed the O/S to now boot and all is well. Thanks so much! Dave
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December 13th, 2011 4:23pm

George, ur the man! That worked for me!
March 19th, 2012 6:35am

Thank you Noel. you just made my day . Jipeeh ! Karen
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April 4th, 2012 8:35pm

Irish Chris - You saved the day for me. THANKS!
May 11th, 2012 10:31am

Thanks Noel! I accidentally set a new partition I created on an iSCSI drive as active. Your steps fixed me right away! Thanks, Scott-- Thanks, Scott Cochran, Security+, MCSE 03, MCITP-EA, CCA, VCP, NCDA Senior Consulting Engineer E-mail: ScottCochran@live.com Blog: http://ScottCochran.org Twitter: http://twitter.com/ScottCochran LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/ScottDCochran
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May 13th, 2012 10:46pm

Resolved: Noel's option worked for me, thanks very much!! This was a simpler, and less potentially destructive fix than the other options (plus I do not have the Win7 DVD). I had made the bootmgr change during the config of the SBS windows server 2011 backup not working, and followed the advice to change the volume to active, but that was a big mistake, so I came across the "bootmgr is missing Press ctrl+Alt+del" error and server would not come up. Have found this problem with Win7 and 2008 servers. First thing to check: Is there a hidden boot partition. (ie. A partition with no drive letter assigned to it). A lot of OEM's will create a small hidden boot partition. So check in Dislkpart. and if there is one, make this partition active. Some people mistakenly make their C: partition active when no bootmgr is present on this volume. Boot from DVD, and enter the recovery command prompt Diskpart List Disks Select Disk 0 List Partitions (look for small partition possibly around 100MB ususlly partition 1) Select Partition 1 active exit reboot Hope this helps someone.
May 22nd, 2012 12:56pm

Well this may have worked IF the BOOT folder was there! However it did provide a lead since it was not and especially since startrep.exe failed. But on a server that has Dell Drivers your Windows 7 trick doesn't make it happen. But again - I appreciated the lead so after looking down the list here a bit I found bootrec /rebuildbcd - the recreates the boot folder! Aha Now booting to Windows 2008 CD, repair, command prompt cd x:\sources\recovery\ and finding STARTREP.exe - it ran successfully and thank God, 3 hours later the server is up.
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May 23rd, 2012 12:37am

This solution was successfully for me. Thank you!
July 29th, 2012 4:47pm

Just to add to GeorgePR's very helpful rundown, you don't actually need to reboot into a Windows 7 DVD, you can run exactly the same utility on the Server 2008 R2 disc by executing this path in a command prompt: X:\Sources\Recovery\StartRep.exe Also, this only works if the original hidden System volume is corrupt, or files are missing. Otherwise you'd have to recreate the boot structure manually. If anyone who needs them I can list the steps, but try the above first, it's MUCH faster and easier. Hey Chris... Its too quick. Thank you very much!!!
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August 13th, 2012 7:32am

Great. This solution worked for me. Thanks.
September 27th, 2012 7:36am

Hi It very simple just do the following to bring your windows 2008 R2 Server. 1) Boot from your Windows Server 2008 R2 X64 DVD. 2) Go to Repair. 3) Command Prompt. 4) X:\Windows\Boot\DVD\EFI> ren BCD BCD.OLD 5) Go to X:\ 6) X:\Sources\recovery\StartRep.Exe 7) After i repair just restart it will be ok. Good Luck Guys, MustafaM
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September 30th, 2012 5:01am

It worked like a charm. Awesome. Thank you!
October 8th, 2012 2:42am

Guys, Just in case of the above not working for you, as it was for me, try this solution which did fix the Missing Bootmgr http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2501318 Thanks
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October 29th, 2012 3:58pm

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