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Windows won't boot - boot sector corrupt?
Mr Ray
Sarcasm sphereRegistered User regular
Sarcasm sphereRegistered User regular
So Windows 7 is refusing to boot. I get my BIOS splash screen and then just a blinking prompt; I don't even get an error message. I can't type anything at the prompt, although interestingly, pressing ctrl+alt+delete does cause the machine to restart. I've tried repairing windows from the disk, but it informs me that the version of windows I have installed is incompatible with the disk I installed it with (wtf?). I can install a new copy of windows, and it'll take me as far as asking me for a machine name and setting the system time, but on the reboot after that I get the same old blinking prompt. I've tried this twice.
The windows disk allows me to launch a command prompt window from which I can see that the contents of the hard-drive are intact, so I guess the whole thing isn't corrupt. Is it possible its just the boot sector that's corrupt? And if so, is there any way to fix that? I'd like to keep my data if at all possible.
My current plan of action is to buy a new hard-drive tomorrow (as good of an excuse as any to get an SSD), install windows on that, and hope that I can just plug my old hard-drive in as a second drive and get my files back that way. Is that likely to work? I have no other backup hard-drives at the moment, or at least no SATA ones, and this motherboard only takes SATA.
The windows disk allows me to launch a command prompt window from which I can see that the contents of the hard-drive are intact, so I guess the whole thing isn't corrupt. Is it possible its just the boot sector that's corrupt? And if so, is there any way to fix that? I'd like to keep my data if at all possible.
My current plan of action is to buy a new hard-drive tomorrow (as good of an excuse as any to get an SSD), install windows on that, and hope that I can just plug my old hard-drive in as a second drive and get my files back that way. Is that likely to work? I have no other backup hard-drives at the moment, or at least no SATA ones, and this motherboard only takes SATA.
Mr Ray on
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Before you continue, I'm going to ask you to back up your stuff.
If you're wondering how you can fix the bootsector, that's actually pretty simple if you are using an non GPT/UEFI installation.
Bootrec /fixboot
Bootrec /fixmbr
That will fix most of your boot issues. If your BCD is damaged then you may have to rebuild that too.
Bootrec /rebuildbcd will attempt to rebuild the bcd, it will also list all operating systems installed and ask you which ones to add.
Here is where it gets tricky, since your reinstalled windows there will be 2 or more listed installations, try not to add the ones you dont need otherwise you will need to remove them using bcdedit which if you don't know what you are doing can be considerably harder.
If you are using a GPT/UEFI installtion then you will need to resolve your issues using bcdedit (GPT/UEFI doesn't use an MBR).
This took some doing, but your post got me past the first hurdle. Rebuilding the BCD did the trick, although I suspect the original windows installation is beyond saving at this point. I've actually ended up with four installations of windows somehow, of which I added the one postfixed with "000" to the bcd assuming it was the original. Then it booted up and started running a windows update, which failed and then reverted itself. Then I found I couldn't log in, getting the error "User Profile Service service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded." But I could at least log in via Safe Mode now. Except that when I did, I found myself with no windows explorer, just an empty, featureless safe mode desktop background. Windows key did nothing either. Only thing that worked was task manager, from which I was able to launch the command line utility. I tried creating a new user from the command line and logging in as them. Nope, same error. I tried a fix for the error I'd googled involving editing registry keys. Nope, same error. So with the command line utility now my only means of doing anything whatsoever, I finally realized that safe mode did at least recognize my external hard drive. So I've copied everything important onto it, and I'm just going to nuke the site from orbit (reformat) in the morning and see what happens. If something still goes wrong after a reformat, I'm thinking it has to be the hard-drive at fault and I'll just get a new one. But I suspect I've actually just completely FUBARed my installation of windows from a combination of whatever was originally wrong with it, plus a bunch of mis-applied fixes.
Like any true IT person, I choose to blame Microsoft.