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bootmgr missing

Posted: 22 Jul 2012, 18:37
by estheridb
After my bootmgr was missing, I downloaded the Vista Recovery CD from Neosmart. I choose Automated Repair and got to see two hard drives (which is correct). With either one I can choose either System Restore or Automated Repair. I've tried both options with each drive, but unfortunately I keep getting the message: The selected partition does not contain a valid Windows installation. You've either selected a data drive, or the volume has been formatted and cannot be repaired.

On my question what to do next on the Neosmart-forum, someone advised me to type in testdisk. I did, but I'm completely lost what to do here. I followed some instructions from your wiki-page, but I'm not even sure what to do. I don't even know whether I'm posting this in the right category! So please excuse me if I'm not correct in this.

I choose Create a new log file and after that I saw three partitions, which is strange, 2 I knew of, but 1 of 42 mB is unknown to me. One extra problem is that I don't know which partition contains my Windows installation, because I've had two earlier crashes the past year (!) and a few hard drives were replaced. Anyhow, I choose one, but didn't get any notification of missing things. I did do a quick search, but that also didn't give anything. Now I'm busy doing the deaper search, but that is taking a long time.

I decided to ask for help first, because I simply don't know what I'm doing. Can anyone tell me which action I should be taking with my specific problem (bootmgr missing)?

Re: bootmgr missing

Posted: 23 Jul 2012, 13:40
by cgrenier
The 42 MB partition may be a small partition hosting a boot manager and system tools, it's far too small for Windows.
In TestDisk Advanced menu, try to list the content of the big NTFS partition. Does it work ?
Please post the information you have otherwise it will be hard to help you.

Re: bootmgr missing

Posted: 25 Jul 2012, 11:40
by estheridb
I hope I did everything right. I choose menu option 'Advanced' and did get to see the largest disk (which I think is the programms and Windows disk). Next I choose 'List'. I think this didn't work, because I got the next message:

Support for this filesystem hasn't been enable during compilation.

Just to be sure, I tried the same for the other large disk (probably the data disk), but I got the same message.

I have to say that I'm not sure whether I made the right choice BEFORE I choose Advanced. Before, I got the menu where I had to choose the partition table type, and I'm not 100% sure what that means. I think I read in the instructions that the selected choice is in general the right one, so I did keep that selection, which was Intel/PC partition. I think it should be the right one, because the object in question is a HP pc (not an Apple or anything else).

Re: bootmgr missing

Posted: 30 Jul 2012, 20:40
by estheridb
Is anyone there to help me?

Re: bootmgr missing

Posted: 31 Aug 2012, 10:25
by cgrenier
Use latest version of TestDisk or the Windows 32-bit version to be able to list and copy files from NTFS partition.