boot mgr missing issue

SHEDDER1uk · 13 Oct 2011 at 19:58

After getting this issue I reinstalled m=windows onto my crucial m4 and all was ok installed correctly. However if i plug in either of my caviar blacks it boots up with boot mgr missing again. My external hd is ok just the wd drives. Tried both of them 1 at a time and still boot mgr missing. Disconnect and ok again. Any ideas guys.

SHEDDER1uk · 13 Oct 2011 at 21:47

Forgot to add the caviar blacks are formatted as well

Surveyor · 13 Oct 2011 at 22:24

Do you have the M4 set as the first boot device in the BIOS?

If not, do it.

SHEDDER1uk · 13 Oct 2011 at 22:29

I think it is yeah ill double check when I get back from the pub cheers

SHEDDER1uk · 14 Oct 2011 at 00:33

Yup set as boot device as soon as i plug another drive in the system shuts down and on restart boot mgr missing. Very odd

ecat · 14 Oct 2011 at 11:47

Sounds like the BIOS is changing the 'Drive Id' of your boot drive when the other disks are installed. Here's how it works on my PC.

If I have only 1 disk and it is connected to SATA 1 it has id = 0.

If I have 2 disks, one disk in SATA 1 and one in SATA 2 they have id's of 0 and 1.

If I have only 1 disk and it is connected to SATA 2 it has id = 0 !

The assigned disk Id is important. During the startup process your boot drive uses this Id to identify the drive that contains the actual OS files, under XP this information is stored in the file boot.ini, Vista/Win7 save the information in the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) database (guessing here

).

Back to my PC and a typical boot disk created when it was the only disk on the system and therefore contains the information 'disk Id 0 contains the OS files' ...

If I have only 1 boot disk and it is connected to SATA 1 it has id = 0. System boots.

If I have only 1 boot disk and it is connected to SATA 2 it has id = 0. System boots.

If I have 1 boot disk connected to SATA 1 (id = 0) and 1 data disk connected to SATA 2 (id=1). System boots.

If I have 1 boot disk connected to SATA 2 (id = 1) and 1 data disk connected to SATA 1 (id=0). System fails to boot! Disk id=0 no longer contains the OS.

If I have 2 identical boot disks... Lol, try it yourself one day

If I had your problem on my system I'd ensure my boot disk was connected to SATA 1 and that would be an end to it - all additional drives would be assigned ID's from 1 and upwards. On your system, especially if your motherboard has 2 or more SATA controller chips, things may be more tricky. Check your BIOS and the manual to see how the MB deals with/assigns disk Ids to the SATA ports.

G'd luck

sedmonds · 14 Oct 2011 at 12:22

This is what I believe has happened:

Your BIOS had a different disk as the primary to boot from, so when you installed Windows it correctly installed to that disk, but wrote the boot record on the primary disk.
When you try to boot with a different disk as the primary it can't find the MBR so you get the error.

I would probably get a recovery console running from your DVD and look at the various options for fixing your boot issue, fixmbr, etc.

jas72 · 14 Oct 2011 at 21:50

I'm sure it's a bios setting mate.

I take it it's not sedmonds idea as it sounds like you only had your SSD installed when you installed windows? Or did you do a transfer from windows or a repair of a dual boot?

SHEDDER1uk · 15 Oct 2011 at 19:07

OK plugged the ssd into sata 1 and rebooted and all was ok. Shut down plugged one of my wd drives in and it is working ok so seems like i might have solved the issue. Cheers for the advice guys.