I used Acronis Disk Director to rearrange the primary partitions on my hard drive. I actually deleted the boot partition, and it warned me about this. Unfortunately, the program does not seem smart enough to correct the Windows boot information. When I booted up, I got two lines of text on a black screen:

Bootmgr is missing

Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart

After Googling a bit, I found the answer. I had to boot up with my Windows 7 DVD, and get into the startup repair. For most computers, this is pretty easy. All you need to do is follow the instructions at the link above.

My problem was that there were NO operating systems listed in the third screen. Apparently the Windows setup routine could not read my hard drive. As shown on this screen, there was another option to load drivers for my hard drive.

To proceed any further, I needed access to another computer. I used Google to find the driver for my Toshiba laptop. Here is my post on the Toshiba forums about where I found MY driver file:
http://laptopforums.toshiba.com/t5/Windows-7/Windows-7-installation-need-driver-for-SATA-on-my-M400/m-p/73650

1. I downloaded the driver file and extracted it into a new folder

2. Then I copied that folder onto a USB drive.

3. Now I followed the steps described in the "How To Geek" article above

4. Eventually I got to the screen that shows NO operating systems. But it does have a "Load Drivers" button. I clicked on it, then clicked on OK, and inserted my USB drive with the Toshiba driver files.

5. Next screen allows you to browse for drivers. I clicked on "Computer" on left side, then located the USB device in list of "Devices with Removable Storage"

6. After clicking on the USB device, I clicked on "Open" to see the files. You want to click on the file which has a type of "Setup Information".

7. My file apparently contained 4 drivers - I just picked one at random. I clicked on "Add drivers", and it "thinks" for a few minutes

8. After the drivers are loaded, I got a message about letting it try to make some corrections. I clicked on "NO". If you click YES, it probably won't work. Then you have to go through the series of steps again, and it will locate your Windows installation. Now you should click on "Use recovery tools that can help fix problems starting Windows" to proceed to the next step below.

9. On the screen with "System Recovery Options", I clicked on Startup Repair. Eventually it finished, and then I could boot my computer into Windows again.
 

Last modified: November 11, 2012