Win7's msconfig/boot dead

That seems to make perfect sense. Adding to the mix, in the Win7 Recovery environment, after I had tried to BootRec /fixmbr, /fixboot, /rebuildbcd, I /scanos'd, and was informed that there were Zero Windows installs on the drive. I fully expected a brick on reboot, but just like Old Faithful, that original boot screen came up again. Whatever is going on has effectively hidden itself from even these recovery commands.

Yes, sorry. The spelling is easeusld.ldr. And it may be a function of either easeus' todo backup or partition master.

Addendum:

One person over at sevenforums reported back that he has an original Win7 install, with the separate system partition (EFI?), and his Boot tab is active.
 
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This is an EASUS problem, you should probably take it up with them.

Too many of these big names in software write crappy software using the easiest workarounds, not taking into consideration what they're breaking in order to make their software work with minimal effort on behalf of their developers.

Keep us posted!

If you want to just make everything work again, you need to use EasyBCD's change boot drive feature. Just select "C:" from the drop-down and you'll be good to go.
 
The hidden partition is System, Active. The Win7 partition is Boot.

I have an query in at the easeus forum. This is all very strange indeed.

Everything already works, in terms of booting where I want. But it bothers me to lose control of the system, plus I'm trying to learn what I can from this. Will definitely look at the boot drive thing.

Addendum:

Woah.... this time EasyBCD brought up the boot menu with no problem - and I mean the original, multiple-entry menu that I had constructed several weeks ago. Could it be that our long national nightmare is now over?

I go to msconfig. I cautiously select the Boot tab. I brace myself. I am confronted with a live tab, populated with the menu entries. I am able to select Boot log, which was my original reason for going here three days ago.

The problem is solved, and I have no idea what went wrong or how it was corrected. I actually wish it still existed, so I could get to the bottom of it.
 
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I was able to get back into hibernation again, too. It had suddenly broken along with this problem. But now on a reboot the whole problem is back.
 
Is this of any interest? I just came back to the computer and tried easyBCD, and it again could not access the operative BCD. Then I went to Disk Management and assigned a letter, Q, to the hidden partition. I tried easyBCD again, and now the BCD loaded instantly.
 
EasyBCD has a fallback mode where it searches for the BCD on all mounted partitions by itself before asking. You shouldnt be in that mode in the first place.

Use change boot drive and let us know what happens.
 
CG, this function is an awesome way to clear away the garbage and reinitialize the disk. With the EFI partition still assigned a letter, to allow me to load the BCD, I ran the Change Boot Disk function. The only tight spot was deciding which partition should be targeted. From the dialog, it would seem that the partition I want to be "both active and bootable" would be C. But I knew better that the BCD stores belong in the EFI.

I've been in touch with Easeus, and I think the problem has become clear. According to FREE Rebuild MBR, repair MBR or MBR recovery with free EASEUS Partition Master, Easeus rebuilds the BCD in a "non-destructive" way. I think this essentially means that it writes its own BCD and diverts the boot stream away from the original and to itself. So any amount of work on the original BCD would be fruitless. I'm still not clear on why this caused inaccessibility of the BCD, why assigning a letter to the EFI drive solved that, and how all this prevented hibernation (I can see how it would affect coming out of hibernation). But essentially the root of the problem was Easeus trying to play it too safe.

After today's operation I un-hid system files and ascertained that the BCD in the EFI partition had today's date. I deleted the Easeus files, which were dated 1/3/11, but I kept a copy of the log the program had left for further study. Then back over in C drive I noticed a Boot folder, whose sole contents were three Easeus files, which I deleted as well.

I wonder, though, why I'm not seeing bootmgr in the root of the C drive. But I just re-hid the EFI and tested the boot, and it's flawless. Hibernation, however, is still broken, so more work needs to be done.

Thanks much to you and Terry for walking me through this. The central problem has been solved, and I've learned a lot in the process.

bw,
p.
 
Have I misunderstood the info 1/4 down the page at A Guide to the Multiboot Process (see attachment here)?

BTW, I figured out why the hidden partition was named MS Office. Office 2010 click-to-run creates a virtual partition, Q. Rather than have office handle the partition labeling chores, evidently Win7 is hard-wired to recognize any partition Q as that partition. When I named it T it simply became Local Drive.
 

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bootmgr is stored on the active partition. winload is stored on the Windows partition. That screenshot is an example of one particular case where they are both one and the same.
 
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