BootMGR is compressed :-(

psychic_teabag

Infidel wrote: »

In my desperation...and not knowing what I'm doing I stuck the USB from the working laptop into the unhappy one just to see what would happen.

I've got to the command prompt at least...

x:\ windows\ system 32 > _

I don't know if that's progress or not.

It's definitely progress. You are now running an OS of some sort on the laptop. We just need to figure out exactly what it is, and what facilities you now have.

The x: drive might be the usb stick you booted from. The \windows suggests you are running some form of windows rather than DOS. DIR should list the programs and utilities available to you. What you are now looking for is a way to access the internal disk, (read-only, preferably), and to interrogate it's registry.

forgotmyname

Get an (UBCD) ultimate boot cd /image or Hirens boot CD/image.

They will have tools to repair the bootmgr issue.

psychic_teabag

Infidel wrote: »

In my desperation...and not knowing what I'm doing I stuck the USB from the working laptop into the unhappy one just to see what would happen.

Try not to rush too much... your windows installation is in a vulnerable state at the moment, and repair tools are usually not very forgiving, so one false move could easily overwrite the information we're trying to dig out.

psychic_teabag

psychic_teabag wrote: »

if you just format the disk, the key is gone forever, and you'll have to buy another copy of windows

Sorry, not quite as bad as that - you do still have a vista product key, so if you can find media for that, you can install it.

NiftyDigits

I have a headache

What brand and full model number the laptop?

Windows 7 32 bit or 64 bit? Home Premium, Ultimate or another edition?

Some ejit likely chose the option of "Compress this drive to save space"

jshm2

It really depends on what the issue actually is. Your best bet would be to whip out the drive and plug it externally via USB to a working computer and doing a scandisk check on it.

But it may be you can do a bootrec /FixMbr at the command prompt to restore your MBR else try bootrec /FixBoot

Infidel

This windows 10 laptop just started updating for ages so I got 'locked out' for a while.

Um, I think my 'messing around' with the Windows 10 USB has made things worse :-o Ok, ok..I think I wiped out. As now there aren't even any words on the screen just the flashing cursor when I load up the unhappy lappy.
Anyway since I don't need to recover any data as I previously saved it on an external HD I'm thinking that the best route to go down now is either the Windows Vista from several years ago to which I have the product key.

Or, to have a go at this Linux thing.....

So my options now are to start from scratch and create an installation CD for either :

i.The Windows Vista I had back in the day (to which I have the product key)
ii.Linux
iii.Or some kind of 'unofficial' Windows version

So i think I need to get some kind of ISO file or something and get that on a usb (tom replace what would normally be a CD)?


I also found this site - http://www.pendrivelinux.com/
which I presume (and only presume) let's you install straight onto a pen drive without any ISO burning?

Infidel

jshm2 wrote: »

It really depends on what the issue actually is. Your best bet would be to whip out the drive and plug it externally via USB to a working computer and doing a scandisk check on it.

But it may be you can do a bootrec /FixMbr at the command prompt to restore your MBR else try bootrec /FixBoot

Thanks for the help. I tried those earlier on but the command prompt was having none of it - in fact none of anything.

NiftyDigits

Still waiting.....

esuhl

You can use ProduKey in Hiren's Boot CD to recover your Windows 7 product key:

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
http://www.hiren.info/downloads/freeware-tools/produkey

Then download a Windows 7 ISO:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows7

Boot the Win7 image into the Recovery Manager and use bootrec.exe to write a new MBR (as I mentioned above).