Windows 7 Not your typical "BOOTMGR is missing" problem

darrinps

New Member
I added a solid state drive last night. I then used Norton Ghost 15 to copy my old drive to my new one. I started the copy process and went to bed. When I woke up the next morning the PC was off. I unplugged the old hard drive and turned the PC on. I then saw the BOOTMGR is missing message.

I then connected back my old drive and tried again.

Same thing.

Then I set my BIOS to boot from the CD-ROM and tried again.

Same thing.

I hit F12 on boot to get into the boot sequence and saw that HDD was still selected. I changed that and tried to reboot.

Same thing.

I went back into the BIOS and verified that boot from CD-ROM was still selected as the boot device and it was, so I tried to boot again.

Same thing.

I then unplugged the HDD and the SDD leaving just the CD-ROM attached and now it boots but of course this doesn't help me as I need a HDD or preferably, the new SDD.

So I am stuck. How can I get the BOOTMGR installed when I cannot boot with any HDD or SDD installed?

Thanks!
 
Have you ever used Ghost 15 before and are you imaging the drive or just copying files over. Any Ghost options to include additional partitions to make sure it is bootable?

I may have missed it, but did you disconnect the SSD and try to boot normally?
 
This is my first time using Norton Ghost. I tried to do a full copy including coping the MBR over from my old WD HDD to the new Samsung SSD.

I did try to disconnect the SSD and boot normally just using the old HDD and the CD-ROM

It's acting like it refuses to boot from anything other than the HDD if there is an HDD drive installed even though I clearly specify CD-ROM as the first boot drive. I even tried to specify that as the first and second boot drive and that didn't help.

I'm just about to give us and buy a new motherboard (this is an older Gigabyte but I updated the BIOS to the very latest a few days ago) thinking maybe there is some sort of incompatibility maybe.

The odd thing is that it did boot just fine BEFORE I used Norton Ghost 15 to copy the drive. After that this happened.
 
Last edited:
I have not used any Norton utilities for quite a while. I did use Ghost but never tried to image or clone a drive. Since I can't really explain why your system will not boot to a bootable DVD, I will guess that Ghost may have some type of priority in the system causing it to load that way. Do you see any messages during the boot about Norton?

Do you have any way to clean the SSD?

You are seeing the Boot from DVD during the startup?
 
I don't have any way to clean the SSD. I think that would work if I could do it though and I thought of that too.

No I don't see anything about Norton ghost at all. It goes through its normal start up checking the IRQs, the drives, etc. Then it posts the "BOOTMGR is missing" message and tells me to hit ctrl alt delete.

I just created a Windows 7 recovery disk on a USB drive. I am going to try to set the BIOS to boot from the USB drive and then repair the thing. If that doesn't work, then I will rip the PC apart and install the new Asus motherboard I just purchased. I really need my PC.

Thank you for helping.

I have not used any Norton utilities for quite a while. I did use Ghost but never tried to image or clone a drive. Since I can't really explain why your system will not boot to a bootable DVD, I will guess that Ghost may have some type of priority in the system causing it to load that way. Do you see any messages during the boot about Norton?

Do you have any way to clean the SSD?

You are seeing the Boot from DVD during the startup?
 
LONG story short, I ended up replacing the motherboard and reinstalling Windows since I could then boot with the DVD running at the same time as the HDD.
 
Back
Top