My windows 7 drive isn’t working bootmgr is missing in the helpful message.
I have a fresh install on another disc which I can force the machine to boot from by swapping the sata cables, not ideal.
I have tried using the start up install disc to repair the missing files or whatever boot mgr is but it done not seam to work.
Is there a simple way to remove content and user data from one install of windows 7 to another.? Really troubled by this.

do you have the install discs? have you tried booting it using that. Have you tried to boot it into dos?

Do you have more than 1 hard drive? Its now trying to boot from the second drive.

Ive had this happen several times. Go into BIOS and change the boot order back to having your os hard disk first (or second after dvd drive).

For some reason it changes it every now and then and ends up with that message at boot-up.

Presumably you’ve tried fixing the bad boot sector.

Can you not get another sata cable plug them both in and pull the files on to the bootable one? Or try booting from usb and getting them.

I can boot from the new os on a second hdd but the repair failed when I booted from the cd. I’d like to fix it. Then move it to another faster disc. It has 6 on board but I’ve disconnected all other drives while this problems around.
I’d like to copy a working version. Rather than reproduce it from a completely new install.

first if you can boot the machine up at all take a backup of your files onto an external hard drive

then if you can boot from the original disk try to revert to a previous restore point – good luck

I’d like to return to the disc with all the files and software on. I’ll try to repair it again. Trying to find bootmgr whatever that is.

Have you tried going into the BIOS changing the boot order of the disks (press either F2 or Del during POST) as suggested by papamountain?

It sounds to me like a) your c: drive has died b) the BIOS setting have changed.

Can you boot into that secondary install with your first drive (the one playing up) attached as a storage device?

With the computer turned off, make sure that all power and data cables to drives and the motherboard are properly seated.

I can boot the new install. How would you go about combining the two? Just copying the folders into the new install I can see wrecking the new install

I do nt think you can copy any programs across to the new install but you might be able to copy your data files

When I had this problem I installed Linux Mint alongside windows, it creates a seperate partition on the drive for itself. I could then explore the windows partition for any files and folders that I wanted to save to a USB drive, so I didn’t lose anything.

On mine it then also allowed windows to boot up for a while, but it then degraded over the course of about 4 weeks to the point where it wouldn’t start again. Starting windows like this may have been a bit of a fluke though.

Shame I can’t copy the hotlist from the working drive to the duff one to get it working.

You might be able to make an image of the first drive onto a third drive (whilst #2 is the boot drive) with something like

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2421302,00.asp

Boot from the OS disc, go to repair, get to a command prompt (I think it’s under ‘advanced’ or something).

Run the following commands:

c:
chkdsk /f
fixboot
fixmbr

Just copying the folders into the new install I can see wrecking the new install

You can copy your data across; most of it will be in c:\users\[username]. You can’t just copy programs around, you’ll need to run the individual installers. Not immediately seeing why this is a major issue though.