Can I add BCD data to a partition

j1helena

Member
I don't know whether EasyBCD can help, so I thought I'd ask. I have a disk on which the small, reserved boot partition was wiped. All that remains is the Windows 7x64 system partition, Volume C. The deleted reserved partition was the active partition, from which Win 7 would boot. It's easy enough to edit the MBR and make the Win 7 partition active. However, I'm not sure how to add, if it's possible, the BCD data to the Win 7, previously inactive partition. I suppose that I could create a new boot partition, but that seems to present the same problems. Of course, the Win 7 system will not boot in its present state, though I can mount the disk for editing. Thanks for any suggestions.
 
Thanks very much, but I'm afraid that none of the options worked. I went through each one, using the Win 7 disc, and every command completed successfully. Still, my system will not boot. The BCD was was added, but OS won't load. The partition is marked a active.
 
Did you follow the instructions in step 1 to boot and run startup repair three times ?
 
What does "won't load" mean? What text do you see on screen when you try?

Whatever partition has the BCD files needs to be active. That may or may not be the Windows partition. If you're having problems running the manual repair instructions, you can try using our recovery CDs which are designed to fix this and other problems automatically.
 
Thanks very much. I went through the Repair once and attempted a second go, but Repair reported that there was nothing left to do and brought me to the other options. The Repair log reported no problems. I then went through all of the steps at the link, and every command completed successfully, and recognize my OS at C:\Windows when applicable. The partition is active. When I start the machine, I get a black screen with a frozen cursor. It never makes it to the Windows splash. As I mentioned, this partition was not the original boot partition, but is the system partition. I'd try the Recovery CD if I knew that it would try some additional steps.
 
Thanks. That's true, and I got that far after I manually rebuilt the MBR/PT and made the partition active. The BCD should be good, so I'm guessing that a Windows file is missing or fouled up. I can't really see what's going on step by step.
 
Well, the the EasyRE disc fixed the problem. I'd like to figure out why it did, when the manual attempts failed. I did a brief comparison. The manual commands did not create bootmgr in c:\, and EasyRE did. The actual BCD hive produced by EasyRE is quite different, in that it contains 12 Object (GUID) keys, while the manual repair produced 2. It would be helpful if EasyRE produced a log or could be run in debug mode in order to get some details. (Should I contact Support, or am I already in the right place?) Thanks again for the help!
 
It worked because you did it for the third time, like the instructions said you must do before resorting to manual intervention.
 
Thanks, Terry. I don't think that the third attempt was the answer. I went back and started fresh. I ran the auto-repair three times, and Windows would not start. Then, I tried the manual methods, and they failed to correct the issue. Every command completed successfully. I'd be happy to send screen shots or anything practical to demonstrate what I explained. I also found that the Recovery ISO fixed everything before I did any automatic or manual repairs. While I'm impressed by the Recovery ISO, I want to know what it did that the manual operations did not do. Perhaps there's a step missing in the indicated manual repair methods.
 
The new Easy Recovery Essentials CDs use a multi-headed approach to getting your system back up and running. Aside from performing commands to accomplish the equivalent of what the instructions in that link say, EasyRE also installs several custom-developed fallbacks in each of the three stages (mbr/disk, partition, and bootloader) to get you back into Windows. Unfortunately, it's not anything that can be manually executed from the Windows setup DVD repair environment or even from the command line in the EasyRE CD.

The reason the BCD file EasyRE creates is bigger than the one you create manually is because it contains a) extra features instead of the bare-minimum to get it working (hibernation, memory test tool, etc), andb) custom code to identify and boot from Windows partitions instead of having you guess the C:, D:, E:, etc. letter.

I'm very glad to hear it worked, though!
 
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