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Windows Vista BOOTMGR is missing

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paddybongo

Member
Morning all I'm have a problem with a friends Sony vaio laptop,i was reinstalling xp pro got to reformatting the drive (not the quick one) it was still at 0% after 30 Min's so i left it till this morning but had forgotten to plug the charger in,when i powered on it says boothmgr is missing press ctrl+alt+del to restart but noting happens i tried the windows CD and Recovery Console BootCD
but i get the same message again i cant get pasted this,also sometimes i don't evan get that far the screen stays blank i have to keep powering on and of,another thing is when i try to get to bios by f2 it takes about 5or 6 times to get there when there most the time the keyboard wont work to get to boot,but i did get there eventually and and it is set to boot in the correct manner,this is a bit of a headache so I'm going for a spot of mackerel fishing to cool off any help would be most highly appreciated.

Paddy
 
Hi paddy, you just need to do a repair with the xp disc but since its a new installation you could just reinstall again as the repair with the xp cd will overwrite all files anyhow.

How to go about Repairing Windows XP
1. Put your Windows XP Install CD into your CD-ROM drive.
2. Reboot your computer.
3. Let your system boot off of the CD.
4. Let the Setup go through the first part of the Installation procedure.
5. When you come to the screen in which it says "Welcome to Setup." press Enter to Setup Windows XP.
6. Press F8 to agree to the End User License.
7. Let the Setup search your system for previous versions of Windows.
8. When the Setup is finished searching your system, select your Windows XP Installation and press the R key on your keyboard to start the Repair Procedure.
 
That's just it i cant get past bootmgr to reinstall i cant get any were,when i put xp disc in and reboot all i get is boothmgr is missing press ctrl+alt+del to restart but noting happens so i cant get in to do a repair or installation
 
Paddy,if you can get into your bios and set to boot from cd drive,this will be a fresh install so i dont know if you will loose whats on the comp,i think thats what axxxo was telling you
 
Is there any other partition on the drive?

I think your bootmgr could have jumped to either your "D" or "E" partition and that is why you are getting this error.

I suggest you wipe your entire hdd using Darik's Boot And Nuke that you can download their free version & burn to a bootable Cd from HERE.

This will wipe your entire hdd. Then you can fresh install.

-
 
Apologies paddy i should have stated to press either F2 F4 or F5 even F6 F8 or F12 as the computer is starting up to change the boot order or to get into your BIOS to change the boot order from there.
You may have to draw your guns pretty quick as you might only have about 5 seconds to select one of the F buttons.
 
ok theonly way i could get in was with gparted disc after formating both c+e drive,i reboot and it still says boothmgr is missing so i still cant boot from xp disc,,here are my partitions.

/dev/sda1 ntfs recovery partition 6.99gib 4.78gib 2.21gib diag

/dev/sda2 ntfs newvolume 32.12gib 86.55mib 32.04 boot

/dev/sda3 extended 35.42gib ---- ---lba

/dev/sda5 ntfs newvolume 35.42gib 86.55mib 35.35gib

/unallocated unallocated 2.49mib
 
I'm not sure why you wanted to do a clean install if the system had a recovery partition?

Eitherway, delete all the partitions if they contan nothing you need (If you have already formatted them they won't have any data anyway)

Boot from the XP disc and create a new partition (make sure you create it as C:\) and format it and continue with the clean install
 
Last edited:
axxxo said:
Apologies paddy i should have stated to press either F2 F4 or F5 even F6 F8 or F12 as the computer is starting up to change the boot order or to get into your BIOS to change the boot order from there.
You may have to draw your guns pretty quick as you might only have about 5 seconds to select one of the F buttons.
Click to expand...

Just a little sidenote on what axxxo posted. As you can see there are various methods to enter the Boot Menu depending on the BIOS, and I am not always fast enough to catch it when working with different PCs. What I do is locate the "Pause" button prior to turning on the machine. Then as soon as the screen pops up with the various choices you can hit pause and take your time in locating the right button for the process you want to perform.
Aside from that, sounds like you need to "nuke" it and start from scratch as Gman suggested. Will definitely save you lots of grief in this situation. :cheers:
 
ok i finaly got in formated and reinstalled windows every thing fine untill i have to restart after bownloading updates,it wont shut down left it for 2 hours and still no so i manualy shut down,when i try to boot it up again the screen stays blank or after booting 5or6 times it loads up windows and then crashes blue screen, i managed to run chkdsk and volums were fine,i also deleted partions to just two of equel size that how i got out of the bootmgr problem,when i try to boot from disc it wont
 
What Model Sony vaio is it mate, i had one come into my shop with similar problems the way i fixed it was

1. remove the hdd from the system, do a low level format on the drive using a usb caddy
2. check for the latest bios version and flash the bios back to man/f settings using a usb pen drive
3. change ram
4. create a bootable usb pen using win2usb and reinstall windows that way

hopefully that will help mate if not try stripping the laptop down if its out of warranty and check the graphics/processor chip

pm me if you need help and ill try to talk you through some other processes i can also give you a list of programs i personally use to diagnose software/hardware faults
 
Smiffy2010 said:
pm me if you need help and ill try to talk you through some other processes i can also give you a list of programs i personally use to diagnose software/hardware faults
Click to expand...

Lets keep the help in this thread please, if it goes to pm others wont see the solution ;).
 
its a sony vaio vgn-fs315e,still having the same problem cant get it to boot,but when i eventually do get it to boot it shuts down most the time it keeps saying new hardware found acpi need to re boot for setting to take effect,when i do this it doesn't shut down properly,i tried to update the driver but its updated
 
Ive read that microsofts only solution to this is to reinstall windows, or hardware fault.
Can you tell us what was the reason for reinstalling windows in the first place?
 
i reinstalled windows because of pc not booting up and after running antivirus software when i did get it to boot it was still the same,so taught it was the only option
 
My best guess would be to do a full clean install again. Format the hard drive, do not select a quick format option.
Is the XP install disc a legit one or one you have downloaded?
Only reason i ask is that the files may have been corrupted on the disc you may have made yourself.
 
Thanks lad's but iv come to the conclusion it must be a hardware problem iv tried every think but it still the same,formatted four or five times uninsulated and installed window but still the same once u get windows running its fine turn PC off and Ur f%%%% back to square one.this one goin back so thanks for the help lads.(y)
 
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