Windows startup error
Worked late last night, on a friday I know! One of my laptops, an XPS M1530, have been making a strange noise. The speaker locks it self in some strange scream. Sometimes I was able to get it to shut up by tapping on it but other times I had to connect headphones to get it to shut up. Last night I was tired of it so after a did the shutdown I took it apart and ripped out the broken speaker and cut out the cables. Then I put it all together again and tried to start the computer. My entire hard drive is encrypted with True Crypt and I also have a hidden operating system on the machine (both win 7 x64). On start up I got the password screen for True Crypt and entered my password for the decoy system and got this error:
[plain]Error: error no bootable partition found[/plain]
I goggled a bit and didn’t find anything useful. I realized it probably was the boot properties that was messed up but none of the tools I had could access the disk because it was encrypted. So I did have the recovery cd created by True Crypt so I started it up and decrypted the entire system. Then i restored the original boot loader and tried a reboot.
[plain]Missing operating system[/plain]
So I only got a new error message instead. Google didn’t give me much more then that I should use the windows install cd to repair it. I have been working with windows for a long time and I don’t have any good experiences with Microsoft repairs. So I didn’t want to do some universal end user fix that would f*ck up my system. I booted from the windows dvd with hope of a command prompt. When I selected “Repair my system” it couldn’t find my system but I could read the disk from the prompt. So I took the disk out of the computer and hooked it up to my other laptop and activated the C: drive of the decoy system. Now the repair function of the Windows 7 install DVD could see the installation. I got a dialog that told my that my boot options was messed up and asked me if I wanted to repair them and reboot. Yes please that would be lovely! Did it boot, of course not!
But I got even a new error! Just a blank black screen with a flashing underscore cursor. So what now? I already know that my master boot record (MBR) and probably my boot manager was broken. So I tried to boot from the Windows 7 install DVD again and issued two commands:
[ps]bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot[/ps]
Restarted the machine and got a new error again!
[plain][/plain]BOOTMGR is missing
But this was the first good error message so now I could really get down to fixing the issue. Started the Windows 7 installation DVD repair function again and entered the prompt. Issued the following commands:
[ps]chkdsk /r[/ps]
To check for errors and “repair” them. If chkdsk finds anything the disk is usually about to fail. Really don’t like when that finds anything.
[ps]Bcdedit /export C:BCD_Backup
ren c:bootbcd bcd.old
Bootrec /rebuildbcd[/ps]
This rebuilds the boot options for the boot manager. But this command only sacans all the disk trying to find windows installations. I couldn’t see that it found anything but I could access c: so then i entered it manually:
[ps]bcdboot c:windows[/ps]
Then I ran bootrec again:
[ps]bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot[/ps]
Then I restarted the machine and it booted without any problem. But only my decoy system, my hidden operating system is still on a partion that looks “RAW”. In my case it doesn’t matter becuase I rarly used my hidden system anyway and really only created it for fun. But I think it would be possible to get the system back but I didn’t try. I’m just glad that my primary system was back on track.
Hackviking aka Kristofer Källsbo 