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#1 2009-12-25 04:40:52

fil_razorback
Member
Registered: 2009-12-25
Posts: 3

Windows 7 wont start anymore ; bootmgr is missing

Hi there,

Santa brought me a Toshiba laptop this year and I spent the night trying to install Arch Linux on it.
The machine came with two partitions, one containing Windows and one containing silly restauration files. I shrinked the second one to 10Go since it didnt need the 180Go it had, thus leaving room for Linux. This operation was made using Windows' graphical tool.

Then I booted on an Arch CD and entered manual setup for partitions.
It was like this :
sda1 * File System Unknown
sda2 NTFS //Windows
sda3 NTFS //Useless restauration

I made it this way :
sda1 * Linux (83)
sda2 NTFS //Windows
sda3 NTFS //Useless restauration
sda4 Extended
sda5 Linux (83)
sda6 Linux Swap / Solaris (82)

I mounted the filesystem's root to sda5 and the swap to sda6, and I told grub to install in sda1.
Windows wouldnt show up in grub ; I tried to tweak menu.lst but failed at solving the issue, now I suppose the Windows section was a comment but I didnt notice back then. Thus I thought I had done something wrong and I booted on the arch CD again and this time I mounted /boot to sda1 and installed grub to sda (and I assume sda meant MBR).
Windows still didnt show up in grub's menu. I looked at menu.lst again and noticed the windows section was preceded by # which made it useless. I removed the sharps and it still doesnt work (see below).

Now fdisk -l outputs :
sda1 Linux (83)
sda2 * HPFS/NTFS  // (Why the fuck is this one bootable ? Oops ?)
sda3 HPFS/NTFS
sda4 Extended
sda5 Linux (83)
sda6 Linux Swap / Solaris (82)

menu.lst has :
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel blablabla
initrd blablabla

title Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel blababla
initrd blablabla

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Now Windows appear in the grub menu but when I try to boot it it says "BOOTMGR is missing, hit ctrl+alt+suppr to reboot".
Arch Linux still works fine.

I think I can fix the misplaced * by reinstalling again and remanaging partitions but I'm clueless about how to launch Windows 7 again. Could it be possible that the partition's content was wiped during the Archlinux install (I never touched it in the partition managing menus nor mounted anything there) ?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Last edited by fil_razorback (2009-12-25 04:41:25)

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#2 2009-12-25 06:26:23

pointone
Wiki Admin
From: Waterloo, ON
Registered: 2008-02-21
Posts: 379

Re: Windows 7 wont start anymore ; bootmgr is missing

Windows 7 installs its bootloader to a separate "System Reserved" partition by default. I imagine this was sda1 in your setup.

Recovery should be a simple matter of booting the Windows 7 recovery console from your DVD and reinstalling the Windows bootloader from there. If it cannot find the separate boot partition, it will reinstall the bootloader to your "main" Windows partition.

Alternatively, sda3 may be this Windows boot partition (are you SURE of what it contains?) and in this case, your GRUB line should read "rootnoverify (hd0,2)".


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#3 2009-12-25 06:27:38

Ghost1227
Forum Fellow
From: Omaha, NE, USA
Registered: 2008-04-21
Posts: 1,422
Website

Re: Windows 7 wont start anymore ; bootmgr is missing

fil_razorback wrote:

Windows 7 wont start anymore ; bootmgr is missing

Sounds like a step in the right direction!


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#4 2009-12-25 18:37:36

fil_razorback
Member
Registered: 2009-12-25
Posts: 3

Re: Windows 7 wont start anymore ; bootmgr is missing

Thank you pointone, you helped me understanding what was going on and it's all good now.
sda3 was a recovery partition (there was a readme on it) and it was used when I put the recovery DVD in the machine. This DVD wasn't able to reinstall just the bootloader so it put everything back to factory settings.
I started all over and got it working, this time leaving untouched sda1 and putting grub on the MBR. My dual boot now works smile

Also, thanks Ghost1227 for the good laugh tongue

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