Lost my dual boot

BrightonBob

Member
I had a power surge due to a blown transformer in the neighborhood. I got everything back up and working and lost no data, but had to replace one drive with unrepairable clusters. In the process, I can no longer boot to Windows 7 32 bit. Any attempt to do so displays the Windows 10 logo, goes to black with a little spinning circle and never boots anything up. My EasyBCD Overview still shows the settings that I had prior to the problem:
There are a total of 2 entries listed in the bootloader.

Default: Windows 10
Timeout: 10 seconds
EasyBCD Boot Device: D:\

Entry #1
Name: Windows 10
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \WINDOWS\system32\winload.exe

Entry #2
Name: Microsoft Windows 7
BCD ID: {640e22a6-baf3-11e5-83db-ac9e17b6eca3}
Drive: W:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe


Should I delete and start over or should I look for a problem with my Windows 7 drive? I did a Chkdsk on that drive and it didn't show any errors. Thanks for any help.
 
Delete the W7 entry and add it again.
The UID is linked to the signature of the drive it's on.
If that drive is now different, the ID will need to be regenerated to reflect the fact.
 
Sorry, I didn't explain that well. W:, my Windows 7 drive, is not the one that I replaced. It is still the same drive as before. I am, however, concerned that my W7 installation has become corrupted.

Can I repair it, using my W7 installation disks, considering the booting scheme listed above?

Otherwise, I have an Acronis backup of my W7 install. Can I just replace that installation without screwing up my BCD? Seems like I had that problem once before. I don't want to become unbootable.
 
can you post a detailed mode view of EasyBCD "view settings and a screenshot of Windows Disk Management (make sure the "Status" column is wide enough to show all the flags)
 
I notice that EasyBCD is showing EasyBCD boot device D, (harddisk1 in detailed mode).
The system reserved volume is definitely booting the PC, so the fact that "D" is being mentioned means that EasyBCD has put some file(s) there, which shouldn't be necessary with your setup. Also D is "active" on that HDD, not W which seems odd.
Try flipping the active bit on that HDD to W, to see if that affects the boot.
Did you try deleting and re-adding the W7 entry ?
If not, do so now, just to verify that W7 still doesn't boot with a freshly initialized entry.
If you still get the same symptoms, then it would seem that W7 got corrupted too.
In that case you should be able to restore a backup in place to fix it.
 
I notice that EasyBCD is showing EasyBCD boot device D, (harddisk1 in detailed mode).
The system reserved volume is definitely booting the PC, so the fact that "D" is being mentioned means that EasyBCD has put some file(s) there, which shouldn't be necessary with your setup. Also D is "active" on that HDD, not W which seems odd.
Try flipping the active bit on that HDD to W, to see if that affects the boot.
Did you try deleting and re-adding the W7 entry ?
If not, do so now, just to verify that W7 still doesn't boot with a freshly initialized entry.
If you still get the same symptoms, then it would seem that W7 got corrupted too.
In that case you should be able to restore a backup in place to fix it.
1. Yes, I tried the delete and re-add to no avail
2. My boot disk has always been D: and it has worked this way for a few years, so I'm doubtful that my problem lies there.
I'll restore that drive from my Acronis backup if I can't repair it from my repair disk.

Thanks
 
If I set W: as Active and D: as Not Active ( both are on the same HDD), should I then use "BCD Backup/Repair" to change boot drive to C:? Where did you see a reference to D:? Disregard statement 2 above. I was looking at the backup.

Is "NeoSmart.bcd the Boot Manager? If so, there is one on C: and W:.
 

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No, don't do anything like that. The BCD isn't broken, doesn't need repairing.
The boot manager is Microsoft's bootmgr module (in the root of the partition marked "system" and super-hidden)
EasyBCD has absolutely nothing to do with the boot process.
It only does something if you execute it on a running OS and instruct it to do something (add, change or delete something to/from the BCD)
What you tell it to do has no effect until you next boot the PC, at which time bootmgr will act according to the data in the BCD.
In the overview mode of "view settings" you will see either "boot device" or "EasyBCD boot device" in the boot manager section.
The former indicates the actual "system" flagged partition where bootmgr resides.
If you see the latter, it's pointing to a partition where EasyBCD has stored some files for the boot, and only normally occurs in the case of booting XP or Linux, where additional files and chain links from the "non-standard" OSs had to be copied in order to make the boot work. It also appears on my PC pointing to the drive where I installed a test W10 beta in MBR legacy mode on my otherwise UEFI GPR PC. That test system disappeared years ago, but EasyBCD still reminds me that there's some old junk there.
The detailed mode view will tell you where the real MS boot files are in every case.
I was merely remarking that you appear to have some legacy hangover on D, I don't know your past history so cannot explain it, but it may have something to do with the fact that you have a data partition set active.
"active" is the flag that tells the MBR which partition to go to to find the next link in the boot chain, so would only normally be set for a partition containing an OS (or its boot files) and not to a data partition. It would seem that at some point in the past, you've had boot files on there for some purpose.
EasyBCD automatically makes a backup copy of the BCD the first time you run it (or if you ask it to). That's the .bcd file in your Documents folder (default location)
 
Well, I've screwed the goose. I attempted a repair on the Windows 7 drive, with nothing else plugged in. It said that it repaired it, but there is no change in the way it acts. Unfortunately, even though I had the power unplugged on all other drives, I now cannot boot to anything. I get the BootMgr is missing screen on the C drive. An attempt to correct this by using the bcdboot commnd results in "Failure when attempting to copy boot files ." Startup Repair also failed to repair anything. I restored from a Acronis backup, but that doesn't help.
Right now, I am running checkdsk /r /f on the drive and I'll try the bcdboot again, but I'm not optimistic.
Unless there is a better option, I'm planning to replace the Windows installation, hope that I can boot up, then restore my C drive from my Acronis backup. If I can get my W10 running, I'll be back in business and I'll address the W7 problem again then.

I would appreciate any advice on this.

Thanks for your help, Terry.
 
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Just to update post #10, I got my Windows 10 installation working again by repairing the mbr and rebuilding the bcd. I still get my dual boot screen, but my windows 7 install is still a non boot situation. Once again, I appreciate your help, Terry.
 
Just to close this out, I restored my Windows 7 partition from an old Acronis backup and I am back up and running fine. I had 61 Windows Updates to download and install and I had to reinstall one program, but all is now good and I have a current backup.
 
Glad it all worked out.
Startup repair is only for the boot files. It can't cope with OS corruption.
When you "repaired" W7, it will have back-levelled the W10 bootmgr, making W10 unbootable, (older Windows bootmgr cannnot load a newer Windows boot loader) and not helping with W7, since that OS was just kaput anyway.
 
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