# BOOTMGR is missing - error on boot. Loaded a ghosted OS image to new hard drive



## ivanalbright (Jul 1, 2010)

Hi, I am recieving the error "BOOTMGR is missing. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart" When trying to boot.

The situation is this:
-I had hard drive issues. Purchased a new hard drive then made a ghost image of my Windows 7 install partition. Ghost image made with Norton Ghost 14.0
-Installed new hard drive, partitioned it with the win 7 install disc. rebooted.
-Loaded ghost image using norton ghost system recovery disc. ghost image was save on an external hdd. i loaded it onto brand new hard drive into a new partition.
-The ghost image loaded successfully, but I now receive the error mentioned.

It obviously appears there is a problem with the master boot record etc. I tried installing windows 7 freshly from the disc and that worked fine, but I need my ghost image from the external to be loaded. 

I do not have any OS installed and running currently. I tried installing XP after this happened, thinking I could find a way to modify the boot record from inside XP. However, after installing XP I receive the error: "error loading operating system".

What should I do now; what is the proper way to load this norton ghost 14.0 image of windows 7 onto a brand new hard drive?

Thank you for any help!


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## saikee (Jun 11, 2004)

Got a feeling your recovery disc may not have the boot loader inside.

Normally you can rebuild boomgr and this is my suggestion

(1) Load Win7 installation DVD, opt for repair and click Command prompt

(2) Copy from the DVD the program bootmgr.exe and the entire /boot directory into your WIn7 directory if it is the C drive, 
if not put it in the C drive.

(3) Put Win7's MBR inside the C drive by command

```
bootrec /fixmbr
```
(4) Install Win7 boot sector code in the C drive by command

```
bootsect /nt60 c:
```
The bootsect.exe is inside /boot of the DVD
(5) Rebuild the BCD by command

```
bootrec /rebuildbcd
```
You should find Xp and Win7 in the next reboot.

The booting sequence starts with something like

The Bios reads the Win7 MBR and loads it into memory 
That MBR will load the bootsector code in the first partition recognised by MS Windows and that must be the C drive
It is the boot sector code that finds bootmgr and put it in the memory
boomgr can then show the user the booting alternatives with a BCD menu.

The original recovery disc will never boot in the new hard disk because even if everything is complete the GUID partition reference of the old partition will not never mactch that in the new disk. The GUID reference is unique when a partition is created. You can check it out yourself by command "bcdedit.exe /enum".

*Word of warning*

If you have installed WIn7 in a C drive position it may not boot if you place it in a D drive. Although the drive letter is not always important as it can get changed by the Winodws after booting up nevertheless the installation order of the partitions in a multi Windows environment is rigid and should not be changed.


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