Installation :: Can't Re-establish Master Boot Record On Boot Drive
Dec 19, 2015
I have a legacy 64 bit dual core desktop (ASUS mobo). I have several Sata hard drives in it with the 4th partition of my 1 Terabyte drive containing my Windows 10 Professional boot OS. After converting another similar legacy machine to a NAS device I took the old Windows 10 32 bit OS drive from it and tried booting the ASUS machine with it. Needless to say, the OS didn't like it and reverted to Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview edition (build 11082).
When I tried to restore the boot drive to the original one for this machine the master boot was missing.
I had just formatted another partition on the same drive that had contained a Windows7 installation that had failed. This partition may have contained the master boot record. So I booted to a command prompt from a USB drive and successfully ran the following commands:
bootrec /RebuildBcdbootrec /fixMbr bootrec /fixboot bootsect /nt60 SYSbootsect /nt60 all
After that the BIOS just says "An operating system wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that don't contain an operating system" This disk and OS are on the original machine it used to run on. As I understand it, Windows 10 tries to record it's key to somewhere in the BIOS. But the BIOS on these old machines don't provide such a facility. I don't understand what Windows 10 OS does with the key in this instance. If it was recorded in the BIOS then I'd presume that the other Windows 10 drive I attempted to use would have found it and used it. Or perhaps not, since it didn't like the new environment.
what I'm looking for is a way to get my original Windows 10 to boot again on the same machine it had always work on before, from the 4th partition of the 1 terabyte drive I'm using.
In my desktop I have two hard disks ( disk 0 and disk 1 ) . Disk 1 is a clone of disk 0 created by Macrium Reflect Disk 0 : ( C: ) windows 10 pro , upgrade from windows 7 , ( E: ) windows 8.1 pro , ( G: ) Storage partition Disk 1 : clone of disk 0
problem description : I see in msconfig / boot a wrong listing
windows 10 ( C:WINDOWS) : Current OS ; Default OS
windows 8.1 pro ( H:WINDOWS ) instead of ( E:WINDOWS )
Nevertheless the dual booting works fine as well as the shift between the disks via BIOS.
The question is , could I fix the situation using the EasyBCD of Neosmart Technologies to edit the bootloader ?
I see can change drive letter H: to E: and save the change , am I right or wrong ? or any other way ....
I wasn't sure which forum to put this into. I created a backup image on a usb hard drive. I wanted to be able to restore it using a usb recovery thumb drive. I used the create usb recovery tool and created the recovery flash drive. When I try to boot from the flash drive I get an error saying that the boot configuration data is missing or contains errors. I can boot up the laptop using the current windows install so it isn't referring to the hard drive. I have tried several usb drives and get the same message on each. Here is a screenshot of the message.
When I try to boot from a recovery flash drive, it fails with: EFIMicrosoftBootBCD error status: 0xc000000f and message: The Boot Configuration Data for your PC is missing or contains errors.
The recovery flash drive was created on a Lenovo ideapad originally with Windows 8, now upgraded to Windows 10, latest upgrades applied. Checked the box for copying system files. Target drive was a 16GB DataTraveler flash drive formatted as FAT32. Creation ran to completion with no errors. When booting normally, Windows 10 runs fine with no issues. I tried re-creating the recovery drive with the same results.
I created a repair disk and tried to use bootrec to fix the issue, but I suspect it did nothing or fixed the c: drive. I ran boot rec while in the root directory on the flash drive.
I have just installed the free windows 10 upgrade from Windows 7 home premium. I have used the file history program to create a USB and a DVD recovery disk prior to creating a system image ( not done yet ) I tried to test the recovery but it does not boot the system. The system just continues to boot the Win 10 update. I have changed the boot order by using advanced options to get into the bios. I have put USB key in position 1 and USB cd/dvd in position 2. my System is a Samsung lap top RC530 with Legacy Bios. How can I check my recovery disks USB and DVD. The system just continues to boot as normal. The recovery disks completed ok with no error messages when creating.
when I press esc after pressing the power button all I see is the choice of the 2 internal devices CD/DVD and HDD.
I have set all my usb devices in boot order above these two but the USB is shown as NA.
I am using 64 GB USB 3.0 drive. Note though my computer only has USB 2 ports no USB 3.
I have also used Media Creation tool to create a Windows 10 installation media. It still failed to recognise the drive as a boot device. The Lap top can read the USB drive ok though just not boot from it.
How do I boot from dvd drive on HP laptop? According to Google it says press esc repeatedly and then f9. I did this and it did not work so I went into the BIOS and changed boot order to cd/dvd drive at the top but it will not boot do I have to press another key?
Whenever I try to install a 64 bit Windows 10 copy from a flash drive, I get stuck on the 4 blue squares, with no white dots spinning. Then after about 10 seconds the PC restarts. I have tried the official way with the media creation tool, I have tried just downloading the ISO and using a third party bootable USB maker, I have tried ISO's from pirate sites (yes, I know, not the best solution) but none of those worked. Every time I tried a different method I always fully formatted the USB drive. Oddly enough the 32 bit version worked once or twice but even that doesn't work anymore. My PC specs are quite good so I really don't know what's the issue. Btw im running a 120 GB AData SSD and a 1 TB Seagate hard drive.
failed to make a boot drive before downloading and installing Windows 10. I have tried going to the Windows media site but it won't let me do it. making a boot drive?
My laptop has dual boot - Windows 7 and Windows 10. My Win7 environment is my main working environment with lots of programs installed and important files. I installed the Win10 environment just to play around with 10 during the technical preview. Now, I would like to disable the 10 environment and upgrade the 7 to 10. Am I able to do this, or have I already "used up" my one upgrade on this computer's Windows license?
I notice that in Windows 7 I have not received the icon in the notification area that invites me to upgrade to 10. This makes me think I might have used up my chance to upgrade.
My end goal is to have a single Windows 10 environment. Note that the reason I want to upgrade my 7 environment to 10 is because I don't want to have to re-install all of my programs and files into the current 10 environment.
As I get ready to do a clean install of 10074 I am curious about the need to disable secure boot and fast boot options. If I do disable secure boot do I need to enable legacy boot?I have had limited success with previous installs to a 2nd hard drive and the problems that arose always seem related to dual booting.
In one instance I did a clean install of 10061 and had left secure boot enabled. In order to get dual boot working I had to disable secure boot, and upon rebooting I needed to change it back to secure. I then made Win 8.1 the default boot and then Win 10 would never boot from the menu, it would just take me back to the boot menu and I could boot into Win 8.1.
I'm making a image for installation of windows 10. I make a USB flash drive with WINPE. and once the device starts into WINPE, it will automatically start to install windows 10 by calling "dism /apply-image". Normally i just shutdown the computer after installation, but now i want to reboot the device and boot into the windows i just installed. But i can't, because if i reboot the device, it will boot into WINPE again and start another turn of installation of windows. How could i temporary boot into my windows 10?
After several weeks of testing I'm ready to go full on Windows 10 and want to get rid of Windows 7 but I have some partitioning issues I want to clean up. I currently have Windows 7 on drive 0 (360 GB) and Windows 10 on drive 1 (500 GB). Both are SATA drives and RAID is enabled in the bios but not active.
What I think I'd like to do is simply swap the drives physically so that Drive 0 has my current Windows 10 install on it and make it primary boot active etc. The drive with Windows 7 on it would become drive 1 and I would delete the Windows 7 partition and re-partition it with a clean empty partition just for extra space.
Second question, any advantage to using this drive configuration in a RAID setup?
After upgrade Dell Inspiron 580 to win 10 the system boot option F12 seems disabled and the box will not boot from the alternate drives (cd then USB) enabled on the motherboard. F2 still brings up the system motherboard edit.
The failure to boot from cd defeats my drive imaging backup software.
I am unable to find a secure boot option on the motherboard, so I suspect the issue is something else.
I've installed W10 in my laptop in a dual boot configuration with W7 successfully. I used this tutorial Windows 10 - Dual Boot with Windows 7 or Windows 8 I'm setting up to do the same thing in my desktop and have a couple questions about drive letter designation after doing it. I created a 30G partition on the C drive of my desktop for the W10 install.
My laptop has one drive, the OS "C" drive, I created a another partition for W10, after installing W10 using the USB ISO "boot from USB" instruction when I'm in W10 it shows as the C drive, and the W7 partition is inactive D drive. Just the opposite when I'm in W7, it shows as the active C partition and W10 is the inactive D partition.
On my desktop I have the 120G C drive for W7, a 500G D drive for backups, a fixed CD-ROM E drive, and a virtual CD-ROM F drive. I've made a 30G partition on the C drive to install W10 on for the dual boot. The question is when the auto backup runs (I have it backup & image every Sunday at 7:00pm) it backs up the C drive to the D drive. Will the W10 dual boot install change my backup drive letter to something other than D, or will the non OS physical drives keep the same drive letter? I will have to remember to be in W7 for it to be the C drive when it backs up, but my concern was if the dual boot was going to change my backup drive to something other than D. That would affect the backup.
I've attached disk mgmt. below, FYI the G drive is the USB with the W10 ISO
I have a dell inspiron 7000 and recently reinstalled windows 10 into my laptop after I received a system thread exception not handled error with a bootable usb. After painstakingly spending a whole day (10 hours) I succeeded in restoring my laptop with windows 10. Nevertheless, I accidentally restarted my laptop while the bootable usb is still in the usb drive and now my laptop does not even load/boot. The screen just freeze trying to load up the OS as in the spinning dots when the windows first loaded up, after 3 dots loaded, the whole screen freezes. in addition, when I try to load up windows repair, it'll load up an extra dot and freezes at 4 loading dots; I can't even load into the hard-drive through BIOS. The good thing is that I can still access the BIOS and do diagnostic test and all the stuff from BIOS. Other than that, I'm unable to access my computer.
My laptop doesn't boot because OS is on E: drive instead of C: drive
When I try to boot it up (it somehow boots up as windows 8.1 instead of my OS windows 10), it gives a BSoD and shows the error code 0xc000021a. I created a bootable USB drive with windows 10 pro on it, but it shows my OS as windows 8.1 instead of 10, and it doesn't allow me to restore or do a startup repair, because they both fail.
After cloning a new ssd the new drive won't boot. The bios recognizes it but the only way to get the machine to boot is to connect the old drive. I'm guessing I'll need to try to clone again or maybe install from the back up?
I was trying to boot from the Installation Media with the intent to restore using a system image disk. I have mounted the disk previously and determined that it in fact has the image intact. However it is not recognized. So, I tried to install Windows 10 Home with the Installation Media but there is no partition there and the error says "the drive is locked". I am now typing this on the same pc so obviously there is no problem with the drive.
Since I did clean install of Win 10 I find it will not allow me to boot to internal cd drive or USB drive. I know this is an attempt to secure the OS or lock you out of competing OS like linux or both but I can find no way around this. My bios has not been updated to the secure boot version on purpose but the OS still intercepts any attemp to boot to any device other than drive with OS on it.
My boot sequence is CD first but it is ignored on boot. Also if I go to boot device selection and select CD drive it still boots to win 10. I have tried win 10 setup but there is no option that i have found that allows me to do what I want with my own machine. I am a developer and routinely boot to cd and this behavior is unacceptable. I would like to use win 10 but have gone back to Win 7 until I can find out how to defeat this.
I am currently running on windows 7 home premium and is planning to upgrade motherboard soon. I know that it is possible for me to create a USB boot drive with Windows 10 on it for a new computer. But I don't know if Windows 7 will interfere with Windows 10. I only have 1 hard drive in my system
I have an HP Envy Desktop that boots off the HDD when I bought it, but loads to my PCIe SSD cuz that is where I have windows 10. How do I get it to boot directly on my PCIe SSD? It's an OCZ R4 CM88 1,6TB SSD. The BIOS are set to boot from SSD first, but it continues to boot from HDD as I see the HP logo every time no matter what boot order I select. I tried EasyBCD 2.2 and that didn't work...
So, i am going back to Windows 7 so i have my disc and key. But how to start my computer from the CD drive with windows 10. With Windows 7, there was a key(like F2 or F12) to change boot device. that is not there with Windows 10. So how do i boot my computer from the CD Drive?
I'm trying disgnosis for my Dad, who's trying to move over to SSD.
The story so far: Using AOMEI backupper bootable disk, we tried to clone his current HDD onto the SSD. Part-way through the clone process, it gives an error saying that the drive is too fragmented to clone, and stops.
We run defrag on the C: Drive, resulting in a 1% fragmented drive at the end, and try again.
The same message crops up - too fragmented. It turns out the 'recovery' partition (It's an OEM machine, so its ~10Gb rather than the normal 100Mb) is too fragmented to clone, and we can't defrag it.
So we just clone the C: drive, leaving 1Gb of unallocated space, and then use the recovery DVD's to run startup repair, hoping it will restore the MBR or 'normal' recovery partition, and make the system load. All we get is a blue screen with a blinking cursor in the top left that persists or over 5 minutes.
Startup Repair completes successfully. According to the Log file it ran 2 iterations of the repair operations, and found no errors! However the drive still will not boot.
This is particuarly annoying as I have used backupper both personally and professionally and have NEVER seen the fragmentation issue before, or had any issue at all for that matter with a cloned drive.
I cloned my hard drive a Seagate 2T to a WD 2T using acronics software.I removed my Seagate drive and plugged in my WD drive in the same spot and system would not boot tried using windows 10 repair disk no luck plugged the Seagate drive back in booted???