HP Elitebook BOOTMGR is missing and Recovery Process Fails - Help or Advice please?

[Kierans93]

Hi all,

I have a HP Elitebook 840 G1, unsure of the exact model number, it has the i7-4600u and low resolution 1366x768 screen.

During Windows update install the other day, the laptop bluescreened (it has been doing this a lot over the past few months due to memory issues, not really what I expected from a 'premium' machine).

I'm not sure if this bluescreen during update installation has caused my new issue, but I believe the hard drive has possibly failed.

When I turn the laptop on now it goes straight to a black screen which reads BOOTMGR is missing. Press ctrl+alt+del to restart.

I have tried going into the F11 recovery menu. During this process the laptop opens up a command box and runs through some tests e.g. determining boot disc number, it does all of this fine, and then an error message appears 'An unknown error occurred while accessing R:\sources\FPP.wim.

If I click OK, the process continues and I enter the recovery manager wizard. I click next, check I understand warnings etc, then when the process begins I get another error message' ApplyWim(R:\sources\FPP.wim)1392: the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.

When I click OK on this message the laptop restarts and returns to the BOOTMGR is missing screen.

Any ideas here? I don't have reinstall discs and even if I did the laptop doesn't have a disc drive.

Really quite annoyed with this as I've only had the laptop for around 18 months and it cost around £700 when new.

Tempted to buy a SSD drive from ebay with a fresh copy of windows preinstalled and move away from HDD.

Thanks for any help or advice.

[WAWood]

@Kierans93

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

read your post about no boot device found and wanted to help.

These problems are generally due to one of two basic problems:
1) Failed hard drive
2) Corrupted/missing boot loader files

As to the first, please follow the directions in this link for testing your hard drive: http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c00439024

If your BIOS does not have those options, they try pressing the Esc key repeatedly while booting your PC and when the HP utilities menu comes up, choose drive diagnostics.

If those confirms your drive has failed, then you need to replace it. Please report back if that is the case.

As to the second, you will need access to a working PC for this step in order to create the media needed to repair your PC boot loader.

You will need to create something known as a Win7 Repair CD. This will repair the boot loader files, and if that is the problem, your PC will boot OK after that. This can be obtained (for a fee) from this link: http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/

When you download this file, it will be an ISO file.

To make a bootable CD from it, you will need to download and install ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/

Once you have that installed, run it, select the option "Write image file to disc" and select the ISO file you downloaded, and point it to a blank CD.

To make a bootable USB stick from it, you will need to download and install RUFUS: https://rufus.akeo.ie/

Once you have that, run it, in the Device entry, use the pulldown to select the USB stick. Down near the bottom right, where is says "Create a bootable disk using", select the ISO file you downloaded.
-------------------------------------

Boot from the media you created, and follow the directions in this link: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/681-startup-repair.html

You will probably have to run Startup Repair three times for it to fix all the boot loader problems.

When done, your PC should boot OK. If it does not, there is a more serious problem.

Also, I would avoid the SSD-with-preintalled-Windows from eBay.  My guess is that this would be a "pirated" version of the OS, and you don't want to be stuck with that.

Good Luck