Timid user needs help - HD has no boot sector at all

S

sandman_max

Member
I'm scared folks - I'll admit it. Here's the scenario. I've got my desktop HD with Win7 and all my stuff restored from backup. Except for the boot sector, which was on an old IDE drive (dual-boot gone wrong - I had no idea it was booting from another drive for years). Anyway, the new HD is plugged into a laptop (which doesn't belong to me!). I need to make the desktop HD bootable without accidentally damaging the laptop or making it think that's it's now a dual-boot system.

So I'm not sure how to approach getting a new boot sector created. It looks like it might be the same process as creating a bootable USB. Do I need to create another partition on the new HD since there's only the one with Win7 on it? Also the documentation doesn't say anything about the Install MBR button or when to press that. (I do have some spare flash drives for testing...)
 
IDE is toast. Win7 DVD is not accessible. Any other options?

Addendum

After reading the link for the Win7 DVD, I'm not sure it work. I think I tried that when the IDE first went out. What seemed to be the problem is that it needs a broken boot sector to fix. But that's on the IDE. Then I tried to reinstall and that didn't work because it's an upgrade and it didn't see WinXP anymore.
 
You can create a W7 repair disc on any W7 system you have access to.
Control Panel > Backup & Restore > Create Repair Disc.
That will perform the necessary "startup repair" which you would do with the installation DVD if you had one.
Remember to boot it and run startup repair three times.
 
Ok. Got the repair disk. The boot menu asked me to select Windows Setup or press F8 for diagnostic tools. I chose F8, it now shows a menu that says Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking (don't want that one - there's no network yet), Safe Mode with Command prompt, Enable Boot Logging, Enable Lo-res video (arghhh 640 x 480), Last Known good config (I don't think there is one), Directory services Restore Mode, Debugging Mode, Disable automatic restart on system failure, Disable Driver signature Enforcement, and Start Windows normally. Fortunately, there's no timer on it, so I'll wait until I can find more info.

I just noticed that at the top of the screen it says "Choose Advance Options for: Windows Setup". Still stumped. It doesn't sound like what the microsoft web site says should happen.

Addendum

Took the plunge since the pc was toast anyway. Selected Start Windows Normally and the Recovery option came up. It took all 3 reboots but it finally worked and I'm able to boot. It's telling me that it can't load Windows Mail, which I've never heard of and also told me it had logged me in with a temporary profile and I wouldn't be able to see my files. But I can and it seems to be working. Even though I didn't need EasyBCD on this go 'round, it taught me to make sure I had it available at all times AND the necessity of a Windows Repair disk. Thanks everybody!!!
 
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