How to Manually Repair Windows 7 Boot Loader Problems

How to Manually Repair Windows 7 Boot Loader Problems

If you’re having boot problems on your Windows PC, it’s often helpful to repair the MBR (Master Boot Record) to restore the Windows 7 boot loader—and you can do it easily from the Windows installation disc.
This is generally most useful if you’ve broken something and there’s a boot loader error, or if you have made the mistake of installing an older version of Windows on the same PC that already has Windows 7 which wipes out the boot loader.
Note: If your PC starts booting into Windows but fails, you should probably try using Safe Mode instead.

Boot From the Windows Install Disc

The first thing you’ll need to do is boot off the install disc, and then click through until you see the “Repair your computer” link in the lower left-hand corner.

You’ll need to choose the correct installation of Windows and then click the Next button.

And then you’ll get to the System Recovery Options screen, where you can get to the Command Prompt.

Repairing the Master Boot Record

If you want to restore the master boot record, you can simply type in the following command:

bootrec /fixmbr

You can also write a new boot sector onto the system partition with this command (which is often more useful):

bootrec /fixboot

And of course, if you just use bootrec /? you’ll be able to see all the options.

This is the same way that we fixed the “BOOTMGR is missing” error when trying to boot up Windows 7 or Vista.

Replacing the Windows XP Bootloader with Windows 7

If you’ve managed to install XP on the same PC that you already had Windows 7 on, you’ll noticed that you can’t boot into Windows 7 anymore. You can use this command to fix that and restore the Windows 7 bootloader:

bootsect /nt60 all

Depending on the partition that you’ve installed, you might need to substitute the drive letter instead of “all”.

Note: if you want to restore Windows XP back to the menu, you can open up a command prompt in Windows 7 and run this command:

bcdedit /create {ntldr} -d “Windows XP”

Using the Automated Startup Repair

Of course, all this command-line stuff is probably not necessary in most cases. You can usually just use the Startup Repair option from the Recovery menu…

It’ll check for problems and probably fix them. If not, then you can always use the command prompt.

Have you ever needed to restore your boot loader to get Windows working again?

bootmgr is missing windows 7

Fixing "BOOTMGR is missing" Error While Trying to Boot Windows 7 or Vista

If your Windows 7 or Vista computer has encountered the dreaded “BOOTMGR is missing” error, you aren’t alone. If the problem isn’t hardware related you can fix it with relative ease as long as you have a Windows DVD handy.
If you don’t have one, you can create a Windows Vista repair disk using our guide.

Boot off the Windows Vista DVD and then click Next at the first prompt:

You should see a link in the lower left-hand side for “Repair your computer”

The installation process will attempt to find your Vista installation directory. If there’s more than one in the list, select the correct one and then use the Next button again.

Click the first link for “Startup Repair”

The installation process will repair the system, and then prompt for you to reboot.

Alternatively you could have chosen the Command Prompt option instead, and use the following command to fix the boot options only:

bootrec /fixboot

At this point you should be able to reboot your computer, remove the DVD and everything should be working. If not, then head over to our forums and ask your question there. We’ve got some top-notch geeks over there!