The dreaded BOOTMGR

Cyanide · 13 Nov 2015 at 11:38

I'd just finished a game on Fallout4 last night and my PC locked up when exiting to the desktop and even though I had a cursor nothing would open. No big deal, did a hard restart... And then I got a BOOTMGR is missing error.

I've got a USB drive that I stuck a copy of Windows 10 on but even though I've set USB as the first boot device it's not loading it. I've got all other usb devices unplugged.

Any suggestions on how to resolve this? It's probably the 3rd time I've had this error in 6 months, I can usually recover from the usb but it's not playing ball now.

Also... what the hell causes it?!?

I'm running -

Windows 10,
4970k,
MSI Z97 Krait,
16Gb HyperX 1866,
Sandisk Extreme 120Gb boot drive
GTX980

Cyanide · 13 Nov 2015 at 12:36

ots3go said:
Are the disks detected in the BIOS and is the disk boot order correct?

If so, it could just be the windows boot sector is broken, run bootrec from any windows recovery media.

Disks are all detected, I just can't get the damned thing to boot from any media

Cyanide · 13 Nov 2015 at 13:06

Cyanide said:
Disks are all detected, I just can't get the damned thing to boot from any media

ots3go said:
Boot into the Windows 10 media and go through the recovery options.

I think I'm going to go out and grab a cheap DVD drive and see if I can get it to boot from optical media. Haven't put a DVD in my computer for about 2 years

Cyanide · 13 Nov 2015 at 13:16

savagesam117 said:
I've got on you can have if you aren't in any particular rush?

Or try USB? If you haven't done so already.

I need it today, got a project that needs finishing and my laptop isn't up to the task. Tried a USB stick but it won't boot from it. DVD drive shouldn't cost me more than a tenner from a local shop

Unless OCUK want to start doing same day courier....?

Cyanide · 13 Nov 2015 at 17:44

I've booted from a recovery dvd but I've still got issues.

The startup repair didn't work, I can't reinstall windows because the drive is 'locked' and command prompt/diskpart shows my boot drive as a hidden ntfs partition that it's refusing to make active as it's not a fixed mbr disk.

Any ideas before I go out and buy a new drive, do a fresh install and grab my data off the old drive?

Cyanide · 13 Nov 2015 at 18:08

Bah! I'll take the easy option and drop a nice reliable Samsung 850 in there instead then just rip the data off.

I've been wanting up upgrade my ageing 64Gb Premiere Pro cache drive anyway, I'll just drop the Sandisk in there when it's done

Cyanide · 13 Nov 2015 at 20:56

Got a fresh install on a brand new drive so I'm back online.

I've taken the old Sandisk and plugged it in to my laptop via usb. It's showing 100% free space, no volumes and it's locked as an EFI system partition that I can't do anything with. Firmware is up to date and it's showing on every test as healthy :confused:

Cyanide · 14 Nov 2015 at 00:11

Shampoo said:
Being an SSD, maybe it's reached the maximum amount of writes? How long you had it?

About 2 years, Sandisk software says it's only used 5% of its life

Cyanide · 14 Nov 2015 at 08:35

Conor Royston said:
Had the exact same problem if you read my post above ^.

Not the same solution though, mines already on the latest firmware

Cyanide · 14 Nov 2015 at 12:50

freddie64 said:
Would a secure erase fix it?

The drive's working again now, managed to clean the partitions and unlock it but I've not been able to recover ANY data from it. Even a deep scan with recovery software hasn't found anything

Cyanide · 11 Dec 2015 at 10:01

Update - I got this AGAIN last night.

Brand new 850 Evo, no errors at all but absolutely nothing would fix it, couldn't unlock the drive to restore and I had to do a full wipe and fresh install.

Is Windows 10 just that bad? This is the 3rd time in as many months that this has happened to me

Cyanide · 11 Dec 2015 at 10:17

joedeath332 said:
Did you have this problem before you went to windows 10 ? If the answer is no and it was me
. I know what I would be doing for sure
Win7 cd would be getting used

I don't recall it happening under Win7...

I do prefer Win10 now I've got used to it though, plus I'd need to go out and buy a new Win7 key

Cyanide · 12 Dec 2015 at 11:47

USB boot drive wouldn't repair bootmgr, not matter which stick or slot I used. The only way to fix it was a full wipe and fresh install - I tried every method I could find and spent hours messing around on the command console before giving up.

I've got everything backed up so I just left it overnight to restore and it's all fine again now.