Win7 boot failure

Zouleous

New Member
I have an interesting situation I'm trying to tackle. I recently installed the RTM version of Windows 7 since I was running RC and it's about to expire. Before I reinstalled I took a full image of my Windows partition using imagex capturing it as a .wim file. My second partition holds another Windows OS which I can dual boot to.

After installing Windows 7 RTM I realized I forgot to backup a database off my old install. What I'm trying to do is apply the backup image to a virtual machine so I can recover the database. It was all good until after I applied the image it wouldn't boot. I was getting a message saying missing bootmgr. So I then ran through fixing the boot using the startup Recovery utility on the Windows 7 disc. When that didn't fix it I ran through the instructions detailed here Recovering the Vista Bootloader from the DVD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

Well it's still not booting. At this point it gets a blue screen that flies by so fast it's hard to see the error. I believe it's saying the stop code is 7B which basically refers to it's inability to find the boot device. I'm wondering if my problem is now because it's trying to boot using a SATA controller that doesn't exist in the virtual machine.

Any thoughts? And if this is the actual problem does anyone know how to fix it? I realize I could just reapply the image to my physical machine, recover the database, and then reinstall RTM. I'm using this as a learning experience though to see if this is possible for machines that I image. Any thoughts/help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Addendum:

I figured out how to fix this. In my case I was able to just tell my virtual machine software to simulate the correct hard drive controller. That allowed Windows to boot.

I would still be interested to know if it's possible to alter a Windows installation offline so it would boot to another controller. My fix would only apply to situations where I could simulate the controller in the virtual machine. That won't always be possible. So is there another way? Thanks.
 
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