It was yesterday when everything was working fine on your PC. You shut down your PC normally and turned it on next day only to find out that an error message ‘BOOTMGR is missing Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart’ was displaying on your PC, leaving you in circles over what went wrong. The error befalls when your PC is unable to interact with Windows due to corrupted Windows installation or it is trying to boot from a wrongly configured or improperly connected hard drive/flash drive etc.

Why BOOTMGR missing error occurs?

• Wrongly configured or corrupt files

• Corrupt/faulty hard drive or hard drive’s boot sectors

• Hard drive/OS upgrade problems

• Outdated BIOS

• Loose or damaged IDE cables

How to Fix Guide:

Reboot PC – Simply reboot your PC to see if the error is gone. Often, rebooting the PC readjusts the internal settings and software and hence fixes the problem. If it doesn’t then move on to follow the instructions below.

Check Cables – Check power and controller cables, if any one of them is malfunctioning then replace it.

Replace faulty hard drive – If the hard drive is faulty or corrupted, replace it with a new one.

Run Registry Cleaner – This tool is very useful in resolving several registry entries-related issues in your PC. If you don’t have a registry cleaner installed on your PC, download a free version from http://www.registry-clean.net/. Click on the ‘download now’ link, save the file to your preferred location viz. desktop or C: etc. and run it. You can copy and paste this link in your browser’s address bar.

Repair Windows 7 – You can repair Windows 7 by putting the installation disc (that came with the Windows 7) into the disc drive and reboot your PC. Press any key when you see this prompt ‘Press any key to boot from CD or DVD’ on the screen. Set DVD-Rom drive as your primary boot choice. From the dialog box, choose your preferred language; Time and currency format; and ‘Keyboard or input method (select US); and click on ‘Next’. Click on ‘Repair your computer’, select ‘Microsoft Windows Vista’, and click on ‘Next’. Click to choose the first option that says ‘Startup Repair’ in the ‘System Recovery Options’ window. It will start scanning and repairing the issue (s). When finished, you will be prompted to reboot your PC. Remove the disc and click on reboot to let the changes take effect.

Kindly note if the repair wizard finds any other problem, it may prompt you to reboot again so that the repairing can be continued.

Re-build BCD – You can re-build the boot management script by running the ‘Bootrec.exe’ tool in the Windows Recovery Environment (WRE). You can do so by following the same

abovementioned instructions to repair Windows 7. When you reach the ‘System Recovery Options’ window, click on the last option that says ‘Command Prompt’.

When the Command Prompt window comes up, type ‘bootrec /rebuildbcd’ (without quotes) and hit ‘Enter’ on the keyboard. If the process goes successful, you will be redirected to the Windows directory. Type ‘Yes’ (without quotes) and hit ‘Enter’ on the keyboard. It will show a message that the entry has been successfully added to the directory. If the process was unable to locate missing Windows installation files, then delete the BCD store completely. Now rebuild the BCD by going into the ‘Command Prompt’ option again. Type ‘bcdedit /export C:BCD_Backup’ and hit ‘Enter’, type ‘ren c:ootcd bcd.old’ and hit ‘Enter’, type ‘bootrec /rebuildbcd’ and hit ‘Enter’ on the keyboard. Make sure that you type these commands one after another and press ‘Enter’ after every command. Finally reboot the PC to let the changes take place.

Reinstall Windows 7 – If nothing seems to work, reinstall Windows 7 with the installation disc that came with the pack. Kindly backup or restore all your data to a flash drive or another hard drive/CD etc. before performing the reinstallation.

Additional Tidbits:

• The abovementioned instructions are designed to fix issues only other than the hardware in Windows 7. If there is a hardware issue, replace the faulty or corrupted hardware piece.

• The BOOTMGR is missing error occurs only in Windows 7 and Vista. The error is not applicable to Windows XP as it doesn’t use BOOTMGR utility.