The other day I was working on one of my computers that has Vista installed. As it turns out I accidentally deleted a pretty important system file, oops! When I rebooted the computer I was presented with a message that said "BOOTMGR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart."

That’s when I began thinking "what the heck did I do?" I searched the Internet for a fix and came across an article by Lifehacker that talked about solving the problem. Their solution said to insert the original Vista installation DVD and boot it up (also works with a recovery disc). Normally you would do this to reinstall an operating system, but in this case I was going to use the DVD to repair the problem.

Here’s what I had to do after booting up the Vista DVD:

  1. Pick your language and continue onto the next screen.
  2. Choose the option in the bottom left corner entitled Repair Your Computer:
    BOOTMGR Repair
  3. Choose the Windows installation you want to repair.
  4. Choose the Startup Repair option:
    BOOTMGR Repair
  5. Kiss your "BOOTMGR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart." error goodbye!

You could have probably done a System Restore in step 3 instead of the Startup Repair, but the Startup Repair literally took seconds to complete and was successful. My computer rebooted, and I was back to Vista in no time at all.

To be honest, Microsoft has actually made a useful suite of recovery tools available in Vista, unlike XP. Anytime there was a bootup error in XP I was always had to resort to the command prompt to fix the issue, but now Vista did all of the dirty work for me.

Not only that, but in XP if you wanted to perform a System Restore you had to bootup into Windows first and run it from there. Now you can actually do it from the DVD, which is something I always longed for in XP.

I guess this is one of those overlooked Vista features, because I didn’t even know it existed until I needed it. The next time I have any problems I know the first place I’m going to turn now!

  1. :( this is exactly my problem but it doesn’t help me the reason because my Toshiba notebook doesn’t come with the Vista Installation disc.
    The system repair require the vista Installation disc

  2. khanh wrote:
    :( this is exactly my problem but it doesn’t help me the reason because my Toshiba notebook doesn’t come with the Vista Installation disc.
    The system repair require the vista Installation disc

    Ouch, I didn’t think about that. You might be able to download a boot disc.

  3. Omar UpeguiAll-StarMarch 12, 2008 at 11:12 am

    @Anonymous:

    What happened?

    Regards,

    Omar.-

  4. I don’t have DVD of vista.so How can i do to fix it,plz help me……….

  5. BULL&*^^& That does not work I have done teh startup repair to no avail also ran the bootrec /fixboot command from the command prompt, I still recieve that error.

    I am about to scrap VISTA for XP 64

    VISTA SUX

  6. DJ wrote:
    BULL&*^^& That does not work I have done teh startup repair to no avail also ran the bootrec /fixboot command from the command prompt, I still recieve that error.

    It’s worked for me on two different computers, and I’m sorry to hear that it didn’t work for you.

  7. I am having this exact problem. It may be that the bootmgr is corrupt or so badly damaged that the system repair is not working. I don’t know what to do now.

  8. ELM wrote:
    I am having this exact problem. It may be that the bootmgr is corrupt or so badly damaged that the system repair is not working. I don’t know what to do now.

    Sounds like you may have to reinstall the operating system.

  9. My Vista based laptop is only a few days from new and this has happened. Don’t know why, but removing external disks fixes the problem (at the moment!!). Oh, the wonders of Windoze. Boots OK wthout the external disk comnected and still OK when reconnected after bootup. Curious and may provide a clue to cause.

  10. Mark wrote:
    My Vista based laptop is only a few days from new and this has happened. Don’t know why, but removing external disks fixes the problem (at the moment!!). Oh, the wonders of Windoze. Boots OK wthout the external disk comnected and still OK when reconnected after bootup. Curious and may provide a clue to cause.

    Sounds like the operating system is trying to boot from the external drive when you connect it. An easy way to fix this is to go into your BIOS, and there should be a setting where you can disable trying to boot from an external drive/device.

  11. I don’t have DVD of vista.so How can i do to fix it,plz help me……….

  12. javier solis wrote:
    I don’t have DVD of vista.so How can i do to fix it,plz help me……….

    Check this out:
    [cybernetnews.com]

  13. aww… i tried this. but when i choose to first boot the dvd rom with the vista cd.. it appears the same problem.. help me..

  14. I DO ALL THIS THEN WHEN MY STARTUR REPAIR IS FINISHED SAY THat startup repair cannot repair this computer automatically…what i do now!!!!!!!!!!!!

  15. javier solis, call pc mfg and purchase the os disc, shud be around $15.99

  16. Or download it off Torrent ;) …..

  17. I have a toshiba laptop running under win vista. It always freezes during startup after being shutdown for a significant period of time. I already did system restore, startup repair, and cleaning registry but nothing happened. Please help me fix it.

  18. AAAAAGGHH!!
    Same thing is happening to me on a Samsung R510.
    I have the boot disk, but because it’s a fresh install, when i get to
    “3. Choose the Windows installation you want to repair.”
    There is no Windows installation appearing, because it’s a new hard drive..

    This is Micro$oft at it’s worst.. Why can’t i just stick in the Damn CD and run it like i could in all other versions.. >:-(

  19. Good Afternoon,

    Sir,I am having problem in laptop i.e,at the time starting one message display bootmgrfile missing press ctrl+alt+delete and restart.Already i have installed windows vista and the error message is come at the time of start so i try to format it in xpII but the error message will be found please send me the brief details about removing the bootmgrfile missing error message.
    Thanks