A while back I created a disc image of my C: drive using DriveImage XML. My hard drive has died and I’m trying to restore the backed up image to a new drive. I am able to restore the files using some boot cd tools, but I can’t seem to make the new drive bootable.
I’m now booting off my Windows 7 install DVD, trying the “repair” option. But windows doesn’t even recognize an install.
I tried the command prompt and the boot repair commands:
bootrec /Fixmbr works
bootrec /fixboot yields “Element Not Found”
bootrec /rebuildbcd scans the disk and finds a windows installation in C:\Windows, but when I press Y to add installation to boot list, I get “Element Not Found”
I understand Win 7 creates a 100 MB System Reserved Partition, I think that is the issue (DriveImage XML doesn’t back that up and I couldn’t find a way to create it).
I’m tempted to just do a fresh install, delete everything and then restore from my DriveImage file. Do you think that would work, or does anyone have any other ideas?
I’m trying something now - went back to step 1, creating the partition. The boot cd comes with GParted for creating partitions. I noticed there is a flag to make the primary partition the ‘boot’ partition. I’ll try this. May be tomorrow before I know if this works, it takes about an hour to restore the old C: image to the new drive.
That seems to have helped a little. Now when I try to boot I get:
Boot MGR missing, press CTRL-ALT-DEL to restart (which I can’t get past)
Booting with the Windows 7 DVD, and trying the repair option, at least it sees an install now and tries to fix it. But when I click next I get:
“This version of Systems Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disk that is compatible with this version of Windows”
The System Recovery screen list Windows 7 Professional, which is the version I own and have a disc for. I assume this is due to Win 7 updates I’ve installed over the years? I’ll try googling that and see if I can build a recovery disk.
I tried the bootrec commands from the command prompt again, the first two worked but “RebuildBCD” now gives no Windows installations.
Startup Repair tells me bootmgr is missing, but I don’t know how to fix this without an updated recovery disk
Got it. Was able to build an updated recovery disk from my laptop. Thanks for all the views and allowing me to ramble. Typing it all out helped me figure it out!