I've been trying to restore my development virtual machine in order to test out some apps, and found out the vmware image must have gotten corrupted. So Windows Home Server backs up all my machines, but in this case wouldn't restore all that well -- yielding a no-boot scenario. So after replacing the Home Server Restore disk with the Windows 7 install disk and booting, I expected to just adjust the boot partition location in BOOT.INI, but was surprised to see that had been done away with.
In it's place is a new command line tool "BOOTREC", but there's requirements on it actually being able to poll the active drive paritions ("active" being the key here).
This link shows how to fix the boot partition for Windows 7. Notice the difference between the legacy use of the hidden, system, readonly BOOT.INI with a command line app.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itproinstall/thread/7791044e-db7f-4144-a96c-945299811f58
Now for me, the initial bootrec command wouldn't let me rebuild the boot configuration, instead giving an "element not found" error. Insead, the DISKPART instructions in the post about setting the active disk partition allowed me to get to an BOOTMGR not found error.
Now Kevon Walcott's solution didn't work on it's own for me, but was the first step:
Diskpart
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK (followed by the number of the disk . most likely 0)
LIST PARTITION
SELECT PARTITION (followed by your partition number. most likely 0)
ACTIVE
EXIT
Second step was from Vivian Xing [MSFT], and rebuilt the boot config for the drive itself and the boot list:
Bcdboot C:\windows
NOTE: Replace C with the drive letter where the
system is installed.
BOOTREC /FIXMBR
BOOTREC /FIXBOOT
BOOTREC /REBUILDBCD
BOOTREC /SCANOS
Rebooting gave me a "BOOTMGR is missing" error. Bouncing the machine a 3rd time, and using the windows system recovery option to repair the installation at least let me try. However so far, the error "BOOTMGR is missing" is still present. So far, Win7: 1, Me:0.
Restarting the VM and again rebooting into windows system recovery gave me the message that the disk I was trying to repair with was not the right media for the installation (note: took a bit to realize the installation was Win7 Pro x64, and I had Win7 Ultimate media in the drive).
Putting the right media in this time, and now it's just saying Windows. Use the command prompt, bcdboot c:\windows AGAIN, and choose startup repair again. More repeated failures, and another restore from home server -- this time adjusting the partitions in Disk Manager in the restore window.