Missing BOOTMGR File

Can't help as well as I'd like, but to start on an understanding of what's happening I can advise as follows, with the caveat that experts might correct this at the margin.

When you start a computer, after the initial power on tests, the "bios" finds the hard drive that is marked active. This is usually the C: drive but does not have to be - there can only be one active drive in a computer at one time. The "bios" looks for a file called "boot.ini" in the root of the active hard drive and reads it for advice about the disc number and partition number where the operating system is located.

There can be more than entry in the list in "boot.ini" and if this is the case your computer will stop and allow you to select the one you want. All this is before any windows splash screen. The process then goes to th disc/partition where the operating system files are located and calls up these files to build up the system and complete the boot procedure. For example, one of the layers built up in this process is the HAL or Hardware Architecture Layer - the layer that defines the equipment and drivers in the system.

Do a Google for more complete information, but my guess is that your process is falling over just before, or where it goes to where the operating system is supposed to be and finds nothing.

You'll have to un-hide files and little tricks like that to be able to see the boot.ini and other systems files I would expect.

Regards.

One question on Boot Procedure.

Is the BIOS 1st step which senses the Boot-Disk?

And we can set the priority of Boot-Disk; i.e. HD , CD or ...

If we Select 1st pririty for CD & re-Boot should it not start from CD ?

and then the routine of Installation ....

Is in Windows 7 some different protocol of booting ?

Thanks

BIOS stands for something like Basic Input Output System and is the very first thing that starts things in motion. Its normally accessed by pressing "delete" or the like very early in the boot sequence and probably just after the RAM check. An advice usually shows up in simple black and white text messages at start that tells you how to access the bios and access to this allows you to set up the basic computer profile.

This is where you tell the computer the time of day, the size of the disks and a whole lot of other things INCLUDING the order - CD, HDD, Floppy etc to look for the a bootable in. In today's world setting the boot order tp CD then HDD is a good idea because if you need to boot from a CD its there to happen if there is a bootable CD in the drive, and if there is no bootable CD in the drive it then moves on to boot from the HDD. There is usually a third option, but I've never really seen a need to look that far.

The BIOS would normally only be wrong because it was not set to include the CD boot option or because it pointed to a wrong HDD for boot before the one you really wanted.

There is also a HDD boot search order if you have more than one HDD as I recall. If there is more than one start up OS on the different drives partitions on the computer then, if I recall correctly this can cause problems.

If you know enough command line stuff you can do pretty much every thing at the command prompt, in for example Console mode, and this includes I think setting the active partition. I personally find all that a bit hard and use Acronis Disc Director - but there are many products including free ones that can do this.

All the above is pretty right and I've done it all at one time or another, but I am not an expert and I get confused about the exact names, orders and details at times. If you find all this confusing, that is because it is until you understand where everything is and what looks for what.

Thanks & regards for your detailed reply.

I know basics of BIOS & cmd & file farmat in DOS is 8.3 & you know all the syntex.

My actual purpose was to suggest the Poster how it asks for a file which is not needed in Installing/ reinstalling the Windows.

All Installer CDs are Bootable & he should do as you suggested to change the Boot Priority in BIOS.

Thanks a lot for you humble-worded reply.

The BIOS sets the priority, eg.which one goes first.....

The first drive with a bootable media in it will get used....

At this point in time, the OS has had nothing to do with anything!!! Its all happening in the BIOS of the Motherboard only....

As soon as a bootable media is found, then the OS starts to do its job.....

Thanks & regards

The only possibility I see is to change first the boot sequence and then use a bootable disk

Exactly !!!!!