I wrote this down here as a reminder / “note to self”, and hopefully as a guide for people with similar problems.
Situation
My PC has 6 drives in it, two 1TB drives as a mirrored RAID (raid1) which hold two separate installations of Windows 7 and 4 500 GB drives running as striped RAID (raid0). I somehow lost the ability to boot into my second installation of Windows 7 which I use for gaming. In an effort to fix this I planned on removing the 200 MB system reserved partition, converting this partition to a Linux ext2 filesystem to install the GRUB bootloader. I assumed this partition was used only for the Recovery Environment. Boy was I wrong…
After converting this partition, on the next boot I was greeted with the infamous “BOOTMGR is missing, Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart” message
Thinking this could easily be solved with the Windows Recovery Disc, I booted the original Windows 7 DVD, selected “Repair your computer” and was surprised to see the error:
“This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disc that is compatible with this version of Windows”
If you see this error, chances are you try to use the 32 bit version of Vista / Windows 7 Recovery Options on a 64 bit Windows installation, or the other way around. This wasn’t the case with my setup. I knew I had Windows 7 x64 and I was sure I had the right Recovery DVD. After wasting many hours I finally found the reason of this misleading error. As mentioned earlier, the Windows installation that needed recovery was located on a RAID1 (mirror). Temporary disabling RAID1 in the BIOS allowed me to get past this error and continue the path to recovery. In my case this was done by setting the “SATA RAID / AHCI mode” from RAID to AHCI.
The recovery environment scanned my drives and welcomed me with the message that problems where found and could be fixed, needing a reboot after the fix.
“Failed to save startup options“
Unfortunately this fix failed with “Failed to save startup options“. This can happen if the filesystem is corrupted so I dropped into the recovery command prompt and performed a disk scan using “chkdsk c: /f” no problems where found. Finally after much trial and error, and searching online I was able to boot my system. I do unfortunately not remember the exact sequence of the below commands, so you might have to play with this a bit.
Still in the recovery command prompt go to the boot directory with the command: “cd boot”.
- Restore the bootloader with: “bcdboot c:\windows /s c:”
- Repair the mbr with: “bootrec /mbr”
- Repair the bootsector with: “bootrec /fixboot”
- Repopulate the bootloader with : “bootrec /RebuildBcd”
- Update master boot code on all partitions with BOOTMGR code: “bootsect.exe /nt60 ALL /force /mbr”
The next reboot no longer gave me the “Missing BOOTMGR” but halfway down the boot sequence a blue screen flashed shortly and the pc rebooted. This I solved by reactivating the RAID mirror by switching back from AHCI to RAID in the BIOS.
Finally the system booted, unfortunately yet another problem surfaced: The striped RAID setup of 4 drives failed due to one of the drives had dropped out of the array, now being labeled “non-RAID member”. Even though the 4 drives where disconnected during the above endeavor. I will describe my solution to this problem in my next post.
I love you so much!! Since the codebase is open source, have you thought of making a version that could be slipped into the next version? Also are there any issues with using the mce remote and using my other remote control programs?
I think you posted this comment in the wrong topic. Anyway, do you mean an upgrade path from the stable to the beta version ?
I am not aware of incompatibilities with other remote programs. However, some buttons on the remote will activate Windows Media Center, so they are better not mapped to VLC commands.
Many thanks Man – saved my life at the eleventh hour….!
OMG. Just wanted to tell you that you’re a savior! I pretty much tried everything else- to no avail, and finally this WORKS. Brilliant, thank you!
Can you please help me with the similar problem? I tried your way by setting SATA mode from RAID to AHCI, but after loading the RAID driver, Repair method couldn’t find my RAID-0 array Windows install drive. My system is AMD 890fx and my windows 7 dvd has both 32-bit and 64-bit in one disc.
This post describes recovery from a RAID 1 (mirror). Setting BIOS mode to AHCI will not work in RAID 0/striped RAID as your data is split across disks.
Did you do anything prior to the RAID failure that might have caused this error ? Are you sure all drives are “online”. What does the RAID-BIOS say about your array, are all drives still enlisted?
Yes all the drive are just fine, one partition has ubuntu installed too. RAID array is doing great. I want to repair windows for getting BSOD error after a sudden power outage and I did not have UPS power backup. now the windows is not loading, also prior this the system was attacked by a “Windows 7 Restore” trojan. So i need a windows 7 repair, but though after loading the RAID driver, the windos partition is found but can’t repair due to getting the message “This version not compatible…….”
I don’t know about the 32+64 bit combined DVD. Maybe it’s worth trying a DVD which is specifically targeted for your processor architecture, just to be sure.
If you have a working version of Ubuntu on the drive, can you mount the Windows volume with Ubuntu ? You might as well try a repair from within Ubuntu using the command line program testdisk (apt-get install testdisk)
I tried so many other suggestions & this one finally worked. I was so surprised to see the windows “logo” appear on startup. Thank you so very much.
Glad I could be of service. Your comments motivate me to write stuff like this.
Very simple. Thanks. When something works in this world, there must be a genius behind it.
Thank you so much. I had so much trouble this second round of corrupt BootMGR. After 2 days of tinkering with numerous DOS commands, this sequence worked perfectly. My eternal thanks!!!
I do not have any drives in raid, yet I am still getting the not compatable error. Any ideas?
Are you sure you are using the right version of the (restore) DVD ? 32/64 bit ?
OMG, You are a god! Thanks
I solved my problem.
Just wanted to thank you, it helped me a lot. And I have a PCI-e SSD so the hard disk was mounted on F: instead … strange
Just wanted to say thanks for posting this. I got the same error using a single HDD setup and changing AHCI to RAID is what did the trick for me.
Great to here here some positive feedback, glad you got it working.
Thanks,
windows recovery suck. I had this problem just because my secondary disc was a raid. My windows installation was not even part of it. You saved me a format.
I also get the “This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disc that is compatible with this version of Windows” message. I Use the exact same DVD as when I installed win7x64. However I’ve tweeked a bit with the CPU frequency and added 2 more SSD discs since the installation. I have no RAIDS though.. Any clue?
I have no clue, try to leave only the drive with the OS in your system while in recovery. But you might have done that already.
Dude U Rock , I been fighting this system 4 days , Thank u so much