Windows XP does not utilize BOOTMGR. The equivalent function in Windows XP is NTLDR, which produces the NTLDR is Missing error when there's a similar problem. How to Fix 'BOOTMGR Is Missing' Errors Restart the computer.
Jun 07,2018 • Filed to: Computer Data Recovery • Proven solutions
What's BOOTMGR?
BOOTMGR stands for Windows Boot Manager. Beginning with Windows Vista and now standard in Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7, BOOTMGR is used to find an active partition and display an operating system menu for your choice. It's similar to the NTLDR for the previous windows system like Windows XP and Windows 2000.
BOOTMGR is missing?
The BOOTMGR is missing error is quite common in Windows Vista and Windows 7. Sometimes, when you press the Power button of your computer, you get a black screen saying 'BOOTMGR is missing, Press CTRL+ALT+D to restart.', but when you did as what you are suggested, the error appears again. This error happens even when you're installing another Windows 7 system to the existed ones. Luckily, there's a method to repair this common headache.
It's actually not as hard as you'd imagine repairing a 'BOOTMGR is missing' error, as long as you've got the right things prepared. To fix the 'BOOTMGR is missing' error is why this article comes in.
1How to Repair BOOTMGR Missing Error with CD/DVD Drive
This method requires you to have Windows Installation DVD and a CD/DVD drive on your computer. First make sure your computer is booted up from CD/DVD drive and then follow the instructions below to repair this error. Don't have a Windows Installation DVD? PowerSuite allows you to make a CD in 3 steps to boot up your computer and make windows recovery quickly. See how to use Windows CD to repair bootmgr error first.
1. Insert your Windows Installation DVD disc, restart your computer and boot from CD/DVD drive.
2. In the open screen, choose your preferred language, time currency and Keyboard. Mouse over and click 0the 'Repair your computer.' option in the bottom left side.
3. Depending on what system(s) you have installed, Windows will try to locate the installation destination for Windows Vista or Windows 7.
4. Recovery Options will show up and click Startup Repair.
5. A message 'Startup Repair is checking your system for problems ...' will appear.
6. When complete, you will be prompted to reboot, and you should eject the Windows Installation DVD from CD/DVD drive.
7. Now your computer should run as normal, and you see your familiar desktop again.
2How to Repair BOOTMGR Missing Error with NO CD/DVD Drive
The method above works well if you have a Windows Installation Disc and a CD/DVD drive. But what if you don't have a disc or CD/DVD drive? As long as your computer has a USB port you can get a usb flash drive you can relax.
1. Load your bootable USB with the LiveBoot program included in PowerSuite Golden . See here how to make a bootable USB.
2. Boot your computer using the USB, see the screenshot below.
3. Once LiveBoot is open, go to Boot Crash Solution panel and follow the on-screen instructions to fix the 'BOOTMGR is missing' error. Besides BOOTMGR errors, you can fix corrupt Master Boot Record (MBR), corrupt Hard Disk Partition Table (DPT), corrupt Partition Bad Sectors and many other errors.
3Recover Lost Data Caused by BOOTMGR Missing Error
The problem of computer system often comes along with data lost from your computer,with the wrong operations to fix bootmgr mising error will result in hard drive formatted and inaccessible data,or hard drive partition.Under these circumstances, you will need a data recovery software to retrieve lost data back.
- Recover lost or deleted files, photos, audio, music, emails from any storage device effectively, safely and completely.
- Supports data recovery from recycle bin, hard drive, memory card, flash drive, digital camera and camcorders.
- Supports to recover data for sudden deletion, formatting, hard drive corruption, virus attack, system crash under different situations.
- Preview before recovery allows you to make a selective recovery.
- Supported OS: Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista, Mac OS X (Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8, 10.9, 10.10 Yosemite, 10.10, 10.11 El Capitan, 10.12 Sierra) on iMac, MacBook, Mac Pro etc.
Computer Troubleshooting
- Win System Crash
- Windows Tips
- Computer Problems
- Blue Screen Errors
I know that there are so many posts on this subject but none of them worked for me.
I have Ubuntu on my machine and I would like to install Windows XP. As my CD/DVD reader does not work, I made a bootable USB from an ISO image using UNETBOOTIN. But when I try to boot in through the USB drive it says 'BOOTMGR is Missing'. I have searched a lot but could not find any solution to it.
My hard drive uses the Ext4 filesystem and my bootable drive uses NTFS. I have set the boot sequence as USB Drive in BIOS.
Indrek3 Answers
It is better to install Ubuntu after Windows.
Why you are keeping your Hard Drive as ext4? It is better if you can keep the area to be used for Windows installation either non-formatted or as NTFS as you boot drive is.
The below information is from here.
The first that we need to do is to create new partition for Windows and format it to NTFS
. Exact steps to accomplish this depend on your HDD partition table e.g. there is one large ext3/ext4
partition for Ubuntu or there are several partitions for various distributions or mount points. Anyway you should use partition manager to create and/or format NTFS partition. You can use gparted. It is graphical and it just works (use ‘sudo apt-get install gparted‘ if you run Ubuntu/Debian).
Second you should backup your MBR record and restore it after Windows installation that silently erases existing bootloader and installs windows one, use “dd if=/dev/sda of=/mbr.bin bs=446 count=1” to save MRB into mbr.bin file and “dd if=/media/sda/mbr.bin of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1” to restore it from file to HDD.
To sum everything up here are the steps:
- BACKUP ALL YOUR DATA!
- Create NTFS partition using gparted.
- Backup MBR using dd command e.g. “
dd if=/dev/sda of=/mbr.bin bs=446 count=1
″ (/dev/sda means your HDD). - Boot Windows installation CD and install it onto newly created NTFS partition.
- Boot into Linux live CD e.g. Ubuntu Live CD.
- Restore MBR using dd e.g. “dd if=/media/sda/mbr.bin of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1″.
- Reboot.
- Select Ubuntu in grub menu and boot it.
- Setup grub for Windows booting.
If after formatting the partition in NTFS
mode it still giving the error then there is any problem with MBR on USB. Use wintoflash to make it bootable.
Also read this discussion where user overcome to make an USB to bootable.
slhckBootmgr Is Missing Xp
You cannot install Windows XP this way, see Installing Windows XP from USB pen drive for a working solution. It however probably requires a working Windows system to create the files on the pen drive.