[heathersonline]

Someone in our family got a new laptop, so they gave me their old one. It is a Gateway MT6730. It was one of those Vista Windows Home Premium machines that did NOT come w/ the disk. I booted it to the recovery options menu at startup, chose the option to restore it back to factory original condition. Very early in the restore process, the computer was shut off. When I went to boot it up again, I got "missing bootmgr press ctrl-alt-delete." Well I immediately went online and found the vista iso file for download through neosmart, and burned a copy of it. So now I can get into system recovery options on that disk.

Here's what I've run into do far:
--tried the startup repair option several times. I always get the message that windows found a problem that cannot be automatically repaired

--used some simple fixboot commands I also found tutorials online for through command prompt, but upon startup, I still get the same missing btmgr error. *btw: i understand that bios must be set up to boot from the hard disk after you run those commands and the recovery disk must be ejected to see if it works--just in case you were wondering

--when i bring up the first window in the repair disk and then select "repair your computer" it searches automatically for windows os, but it never finds my windows, and says to "load drivers" well, there is an explorer type window that comes up after you press "load drivers" and it shows me that on the computer are the following disks: local disk c (41 gb free out of 100gb); recovery d: 70.7 mb free of 11.1 gb, and boot x: (31.1 mb free out of 33.5mb). And when I explore these drives they have my system and other files in them. So they ARE there, but the computer does not recognize any OS even still

--went to command prompt and asked it to scan for os there. it found none.

I think it is possible, but I don't know how to do it myself to get everything pointing in the right direction again so that what is there is recognized to be what it is.

Please advise! Thanks~Heather

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Hi Heather

Very early in the restore process, the computer was shut off.

I think this is your problem. If the laptop rebooted before the factory restore had chance to go all the way through, you are almost certainly left with an incomplete Operating System. So that is why all of the repairs are not working because all of the Windows files are probably not there.

Try doing another system recovery on it to factory original condition and see if it will go all the way through this time.

[BlackOxide]

Hi Heather

Very early in the restore process, the computer was shut off.

I think this is your problem. If the laptop rebooted before the factory restore had chance to go all the way through, you are almost certainly left with an incomplete Operating System. So that is why all of the repairs are not working because all of the Windows files are probably not there.

Try doing another system recovery on it to factory original condition and see if it will go all the way through this time.

[heathersonline]

I don't know how to get back to doing a system restore b/c I don't seem to get those options by pressing "r" or "f8" on startup. & if I don't boot off a disk, i get a "boot mgr missing" error. I have a vista repair disk that i burned on a different computer from neosmart, but the factory restore option is not present on that list of repair options, only system restore is, and it doesn't have any points to go back to when i get it open. can i back up another computer and do a full computer restore using the contents of another computer that has vista maybe? is their a way to command my computer to do a restore of that type from the command prompt? any ideas are much appreciated. thank you! heather

edit: btw, my cd/dvd drive in that computer has been slowly failing. it won't read my repair disk anymore. it doesn't even give me the option to press key to boot from the disk. it is as if it is trying to spin the disk but failing. this had been happening off and on for a while and a "WINDOWS boot manager" window would pop up (it was a black screen w/ white text) giving me the error that the screen indicated a failing media device. But it seems to be really GONE now. I checked the bios order. It should give me the option to boot from cd but isn't.

Edited by heathersonline, 14 February 2010 - 02:48 PM.

[BlackOxide]

can i back up another computer and do a full computer restore using the contents of another computer that has vista maybe?

No this is not possible unfortunately.

is their a way to command my computer to do a restore of that type from the command prompt?

Not that I know of, most recovery operations now run through their own interface.

Can you double check that you now definitely can't run the Recovery anymore. I have got this from the Gateway website regarding your exact laptop model....

If you cannot run Windows:
- Turn on or restart your notebook
- While the notebook is starting up, repeatedly press F8 until the Recovery Options screen opens. If Windows starts to load instead, restart the notebook and try again
- Press the arrow keys on your keyboard to select Repair Your Computer, then press Enter.
- Gateway System Recovery starts and the System Recovery Options dialog box opens.
- Select a language and keyboard layout, then click Next
- Click the User name box to select a Windows user account, click in the Password box and type the user accounts password (if any), then click Next. The System Recovery Options menu opens.
- Click Restore Application. The Welcome to Gateway System Recovery Window opens.
- Click Next
- Click Full Factory Recovery then Next to recover your system

If you can't get the recovery going, let me know exactly what menu comes up on the screen when you repeatedly keep tapping F8 as soon as you switch the laptop on.