BootMGR is missing - pc won't start

[lexmark]

Not sure where this belongs so i'll leave it here...


I can run my pc on vista with my old hard drive, but as soon as I plug in my new hard drive along with the old one and reboot the pc, it gives me "BootMGR is missing", and it doesn't want to start. I tried the boot-repair option from my vista cd, that didn't help.


I have a ubuntu live cd which allows me to play around with my new hard drive settings, is there a setting I should change?


NEW DRIVE with my old files on it:

Old drive with a clean copy of windows:

 

[johnb35]

Are you booting to the correct drive? Sometimes when you connect a new drive it will change the boot order.

 

[kennebell347]

Are you booting to the correct drive? Sometimes when you connect a new drive it will change the boot order.

+1 on this. I reformatted the other day and it kept doing what you are experiencing. Every time I would think I fixed it by selecting the correct drive. Turns out I had to actually go into the bios and choose the right drive there, not the one that popped up after it said Boot mgr is missing. Now, it is fixed.

 

[S.T.A.R.S.]

What operating systems are on those 2 hard disk drives?

The reason why I am asking this is because you cannot use Vista disk to repair the MBR of the old drive which let's say has XP installed on it.Instead you will need to use the XP disk.

Also are those 2 hard disk drives PATA or SATA.If they are PATA,you must decide which one is the master HDD and which one is the slave HDD by setting the jumpers on the correct places.And then in the BIOS simply set the master hard disk drive from which you want to boot as the first device.If you ever want to boot from the slave hard disk drive instead then again in the BIOS simply set the slave hard disk drive to boot first and then the master hard disk drive to boot as the second one.


However if the MBR is missing on one of the drives,use the CORRECT Windows CD or DVD disk,boot from it and go to the Recovery Console and use the FIXMBR and FIXBOOT commands to repair the damaged or missing MBR (master boot record).




Cheers mates!