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not able to boot with windows 7 os
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
To access the System Recovery Environment in Windows 7, simply boot your PC, just before the system loads the Windows operating system; hit the [F8] Function 8 key on your keyboard which will launch the Advanced Boot Options Menu. There you will see a new option 'Repair Your Computer', select this option and hit 'Enter' on your keyboard.
Andre Da Costa http://adacosta.spaces.live.com http://www.activewin.com
Interesting. Someone at another site posted with the same problem when helping a friend fix their Windows XP machine.
I suggest starting with checking that there are no CDs or DVDs in the drives or removable drives (backups) plugged in to the USB ports. If that is not the problem, see if this KB article helps: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315261/
Corrine, Microsoft MVP (Consumer Security). This posting is provided "AS IS" without warranty, and confers no rights.
Replying to myself.....
It appears the problem is in the MBR... for some reason the MBR's on all my drives were set to XP settings...
I booted to the Windows 7 dvd, used the dos prompt and entered command
bootsect /nt60 all
Now the windows 7 dvd still claims it can't see my installation... but everything else works
Ok.. I have this problem, but mine seems to be a little different.
I want to remove an old hard drive and upgrade it... this drive use to contain my windows xp install, but that wasn't even on this computer, and all the drives were wiped before installing Windows 7.
However the drive I want to remove is in the Channel 1 Primary position.
When I tell the computer to boot from this old drive, now empty except for the bootmgr... it works fine.
I copied the bootmgr and boot directory to my Windows 7 drive, ran easybcd... and rebooted... NTLDR is missing
I inserted my Windows 7 dvd and booted... start-up repair detected a problem... but said it could not fix it, Directory was not found
Manually fixing using bootrec... fixmbr and fixboot work, but rebuildbcd says Directory not found.
The Windows installation does not show up in the previous version window in the install CD... the drive does not even show up in the install cd... and this is the drive I installed to with this cd about 2 months ago.
However while using the CD, I can open dos prompt and see everything on all drives.
After all this I can still just reattach my old drive and boot just fine, but I really want to get rid of the old drive, it's an 8 year old 250GB SATA1 drive... I have a 1.5TB SATA3 drive to replace it....
If anyone can think of something else that I haven't tried... please let me know... and don't tell me to press F8
This answer is pointless for any bootmgr errors... since you will never get to the point of being able to press F8
However most boot issues will be resolved by running the Start-Up Repair from the Windows 7 Disc
