BOOTMGR is missing in Windows Server 2008

[BennyJammin]

Hi Everyone,

One of our SQL Servers became completely unresponsive so it was Powered Off.  I know, not exactly the best thing to do, but it's been done and since the VM was Powered On, we're getting an error

BOOTMGR is missing in Windows Server 2008

Ctrl + Alt + Del to reboot

I've done some searching and found a bunch of suggestions to boot from the 2008 image (which I've done) and then use bootmgr or fixmbr / bootrec / etc to restore the OS.  I was able to open a command prompt, however the C:\ isn't available to select, and diskpart / list volume doesn't show C: as a volume, so I'm pretty sure it's not being detected.  I'm not sure why this is, I was thinking that it might have been because we are using the Paravirtual SCSI Controller Type, but that's just a guess

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to resolve this issue?  I think it's a two-tier issue, detect the C:, then fix the bootmgr issue.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated! :smileyhappy:

Thanks.

[Abhilash Basavarajaiah]

As this is something related to Windows, you will get better responses in Microsoft forums.

They would have run into such errors like these a lot of times and will know workarounds.

[Abhilash Basavarajaiah]

Or you could also check this below thread.

BOOTMGR Missing

[BennyJammin]

Thanks Abhilash.

Speaking with a System Administrator friend, we were able to work out that we needed the Paravirtual SCSI driver (/vmimages/floppies/pvscsi-Windows2008.flp) so that we could detect the drives when booting from the command prompt (I had a feeling that we needed to do something like this, but had no idea where the driver was located). We were able to mount this file to the floppy drive by editing the settings of the VM, and then load the driver when asked during the Windows 2008 setup / repair.

We were then able to run the following which fixed the problem

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd
x:\sources\recovery\StartRep.exe