admcampbell

ok, I have a compaq presario, and it had windows XP on it. I downloaded a copy of the Windows 7 RC directly from the microsoft website, and tried to install it from a USB thumb drive. It started the installer fine and so I formatted the HDD I was going to be installing windows 7 to. about a third of the way through the installation, it suddenly stopped and said I had files missing, and quit the installation. After this I tried to write a DVD with the files on it, thinking that might work instead. So I popped in the DVD and changed my boot priority to my DVD drive, saved and quit my BIOS. My computer has since been displaying these messages:

bootmgr is missing
press ctrl+alt+delete to restart

non-system disk
press any key

I thought maybe some of the messed up files from the faulty install may be messing me up, so I popped in the HDD to my other computer and formatted it as NTSC using windows XP disk manager program. and now it just hangs, blinking an underscore _......_......_ please help me!

raptor_pa

When you formatted it, the drive is now blank, and won't be bootable till you install an OS - The bootmanager message means the same, formatting blanks out the entire filesystem, so the computer can't find anything, including the operating system. basically you are going to need to get a bootable cd that will install, perhaps reload your XP cd and start from there with 7.0.

admcampbell

hmmm, the boot CD from my Compaq is long since gone. Would it be possible to make a recovery CD from another computer? I have an HP that I could make a CD from?

Or, would it be possible to use the other computer to install windows 7 onto the now messed up HDD? like, couldnt I put the Windows 7 DVD in that HP, boot up the installer and then select to install the OS onto the messed up HDD? or would that run the risk of messing up what is already on the HP's main Hard drive?

raptor_pa

Yeah it will rewrite the boot manager to point to both the new and the old OS in a dual boot situation, that and the fact that the base hardware profile, the Hardware abstraction layer is built during the install, so when you moved the disk back, there would still be no boot manager, and the drive may not boot unless the two machines are almost identical hardware... chipsets, procesor etc... Making the CD may work, may not, depends how tight the recovery partition was tied to hardware when the HP recovery poartition was built. Can you burn a bootable DVD from teh windows 7 you have? Burn that ISO in the other machine perhaps

admcampbell

I do have a DVD of windows 7 I wrote from an ISO, would that work on my compaq that doesnt have the bootmgr?

raptor_pa

If you can boot to the DVD drive, have to set the boot order to boot to the DVD, the issue you are going to have is when that copy of 7.0 expires, you will have no OS on the machine - and will not be able to roll back to XP.

admcampbell

yeah I understand, I am just tryin to get this computer working right now, but I just popped in that DVD and set my boot order but now it is saying:

Master boot record error
Press a key

and when I do, it says:

DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

raptor_pa

Try the DVD in the other system you have and see if it is bootable...

admcampbell

Wait a minute, nevermind, stupid mistake, I have 2 DVD drives and set the wrong one to 1st priority, it's working now, thatnks for your help