Rebuild boot manager after missing boot partition

pelox

pelox

Member
Hi everybody,

I have been experiencing some issues with my laptop 300GB HDD and decided to replace it after the frequency of bad sectors showing up was starting to compromise its performance.

Basically the HDD structure is as follows:
- A hidden 10GB recovery partition which contains the boot manager.
- A Primary 100GB partition with WIndows 7
- A logical 190GB partition with all the Data

I have tried to simply clone the disk using a variety of applications, but none of them can read the damaged Recovery partition. The other two are copied without problems.

The issue comes when I try to boot the new disk without the recovery partition. My computer is not able to locate the right boot sector in the HDD, but I can still boot it using bootable media such as Hiren's Boot and launch using "Boot from Hard Drive". The partitions are perfectly healthy.
I've tried to refresh the new disk structure using EasyBCD. I write the new partition table (with just the new OS listed in the default location) and reboot, but nothing happens. If I boot without HIren's CD (or any other bootable disk) I just get the infamous blinking cursor, so my PC does not locate the boot sector correctly.

What should I do now in order to update the new disk structure and make it bootable?

Thank you!
 
Windows7 will let you create a repair CD (Control Panel > Back Up & Restore > Create Repair CD).
Make one if you do not have a Windows Installation DVD. (It will do the same job if you do have one)
Boot either and select "repair my computer" (bottom left), then "repair startup".
Do the whole of the above line (including the boot) three times. (It has several things to repair and only does one per pass)
 
Hi, thanks for your reply Terry!

Unfortunately I have tried to do as you suggest several times without getting any results. The Repair Utility looks for issues but finds nothing, even if I run it several times rebooting after each check.
I suspect that the problem lies behind the different partition structure, but given that I can no longer mirror the original structure, I would like to build a new one based on my current configuration. I have even installed a Linux Distro (Zorin) in a different partition and set a GRUB manager in a standalone small partition. GRUB manages to correctly list both OSs, but again, when it tries to boot Windows, I get the blinking cursor. If I boot using HIren's Boot (boot from CD) I can still run Windows without problems.

Any additional hints?
 
Is the correct partition marked "active" ?
When you boot into Windows (by whatever method gets you there at present) you should find bootmgr and a \boot folder (you'll need folder options set thus to see them) on the active partition. If they're elsewhere, that's the partition that needs to be set "active" using Disk Management.
 
The partition was already flagged as "active" and "boot", but still the problem persisted.
I have managed to solve the issue by creating a separate partition and install a boot manager, then set this partition as active and boot and, once inside the boot manager, point at the Windows partition and set it as the default boot OS.

Thanks for your comments.
 
Disk Management flags have the following meanings

"boot" = "this is the system you're running"
"system" = "this is where I found the boot files for the currently running system"
"active" (on the first HDD in the BIOS boot sequence) = "this is where I started the search for the boot files"
"active" (on subsequent HDDs in the BIOS boot sequence) ="this is where I will look if I don't find something in the MBR on the first HDD"

So "active" and "boot" does not mean the correct partition was active.
Now that you've fixed the problem, you'll see that the "active" partition is also "system".
Previously I imagine, you had "active" "boot" (courtesy of Hyren's) but not "system".
If you don't want the additional separate partition, you could use EasyBCD
Changing the Boot Partition
to make copies of the necessary stuff back on your sysres partition.
 
Excellent explanation, Terry, thanks a lot!
I had tried to use EasyBCD, but my initial issue was not solved until I created the additional partition to install a standalone boot manager.

Anyway, thanks again for illustrating the meaning of the flags.
 
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