Boot MGR Missing?

[Mad-Mike]

My gf is selling her comp that been sat under her bed for awhile now and hasnt been used for atleast a year now and shes had it awhile.
So I said ill put windows 7 on it so it will sell better, But she forgot her password to her account etc so I just put her hard drive in my comp and formatted it and put it back in hers and when I come to install Windows 7 on it said Missing Boot MGR.
Ive tryed to set the Bios to default, ive made sure im booting from cd/dvd rom.
Alls i know about her comp is that its 32-bit and only has 500mb RAM lol oh and it was Windows XP.

Any Idea's?

thnx

[General_J0k3r]

a) forget the windows 7 idea with 500mbs of ram (however you get to that number)
b) u sure that the CD is bootable?

[Mad-Mike]

Originally Posted by General_J0k3r

a) forget the windows 7 idea with 500mbs of ram (however you get to that number)
b) u sure that the CD is bootable?

yes the cd is bootable for sure!

[[R-DEV]Deadfast]

When exactly does it start complaining about the MBR?

[Mr.Hyde]

Easiest solution...Put your gf HDD back into your computer.

Insert the Win 7 Boot CD/DVD. Autoplay or manually click setup.

Allow Win 7 to setup, once it gets to the 'Select a drive' screen, select your gf HDD and install.

[General_J0k3r]

Originally Posted by Mr.Hyde

Easiest solution...Put your gf HDD back into your computer.

Insert the Win 7 Boot CD/DVD. Autoplay or manually click setup.

Allow Win 7 to setup, once it gets to the 'Select a drive' screen, select your gf HDD and install.

i doubt that the hardware configs will match to a degree that windows boots afterwards. or is that kind of approach possible with windows 7? i'd be thoroughly surprised.

[VoXiNaTiOn]

The way Win7 does drivers is different to previous OS's, afaik it only loads ones that are needed, any others it simply doesn't load.


Tried the above method the other day for Vista expecting a BSOD, be able to boot in safe mode and then uninstall drivers. It didn't work lol (But that was Vista)

[Mr.Hyde]

I just did it on my wifes computer/laptop. She has/had XP. The only difference was my Win 7 disk was an .iso on my network drive.

Worked like a charm.

EDIT: AH! I see what you mean now. gf computer has different hardware...hmmm.

Yet, if he did install Win 7 it would at least put another MBR on the HDD that would allow him to intall on his gf computer without the error message

P.S Edit: Then again. Why would you get a missing MBR error message if you're booting from a CD/DVD in the first place? If you're installing an OS from a CD/DVD it should never seek out an MBR since it's copying over the files to do it in the first place. (Stupid Question) When you formated your gf HDD, what file system did you use? Also, make sure the CD/DVD Win 7 is 32bit.