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Apr 24, 2014

How to Fix Windows 7 When It Fails to Boot

Step five: Now sitting at the command prompt, enter the following command and then press enter:

bootrec.exe /FixMbr

If successful, you should be greeted with the message The operation completed successfully. That's it! Your Master Boot Record has been repaired.

While the above command does fix the MBR, and sometimes that is enough, there still might be an error with the system partition's boot sector and Boot Configuration Data (BCD). This might occur if you have tried to install another operating system alongside Windows 7, such as Windows XP. To write a new boot sector, try the following command:

bootrec.exe /FixBoot

If you are still faced with your Windows 7 installation not being detected during start up, or if you wish to include more than one operating system choice to your system's boot list, you can try the following command to rebuild your BCD:

bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd

The above command will scan all your disks for other operating systems compatible with Windows 7 and allow you to add them to your system's boot list. If this fails, you may need to backup the old BCD folder* and create a new one in its place with the following commands:

bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup
c:
cd boot
attrib bcd -s -h -r
ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
bootrec /RebuildBcd

*Some users also find simply deleting the boot folder and retrying the above steps effective at resolving boot issues, but it is not recommended.