The dreaded BOOTMGR

Cyanide

Cyanide

Cyanide

Soldato
Joined
5 Mar 2006
Posts
3,975
Location
Nottingham
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
 
SSD I would say. Worth running a health check once it's back up to speed. Make sure all the cables are not loose (especially SATA, SATA power).

Try boot the computer with all drives unplugged (except the Win10 USB, and maybe optical if it's empty and it's a pain to disconnect).

When installing / re-installing windows, unplug all your drives, and install on SSD. I thought they fixed the wandering MBR, but maybe not.
 
Last edited:
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.
 
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.
Click to expand...

Disks are all detected, I just can't get the damned thing to boot from any media :(
 
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.
Click to expand...

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....?
 
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, I've had a very similar thing happen on a few occasions. I have no idea what causes it, but upgrading to Win 10 from 7 caused it to reoccur a lot.

I found the only real way to fix it was a fresh install. In my case, sometimes the Windows install environment wouldn't even let me delete the volume or if it did, it wouldn't allow me to install the OS again. Nightmare.

If you do a reinstall, make sure you unplug all other drives. If the volume is still being funny, try moving it across to a different port on your motherboard.

If you can, it helps to have a copy of GParted on a bootable USB for when Windows isn't playing nice.

If you have data that needs rescuing, you could try installing the OS onto a separate drive and seeing if it will let you access it. I have my doubts it would, but you never know.
 
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 :p
 
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 said:
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?
Click to expand...

Had the exact same problem if you read my post above ^.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom