I am trying to repair an HP Touchsmart 300 with Windows 7 that won't boot--The message "BOOTMGR is missing" appears very early in the process. The owner of the computer tried talking to HP customer support and told me that the Windows CD was in the drive. Well, of course, it was a Microsoft Office CD, and my guess is that it's a waste of time to try to chase down the original disks--either they don't exist or the owner doesn't know where to find them.
My Windows systems are all XP and earlier, but I found that I could boot the computer with an Ubuntu Linux CD. This CD allows me to run a Linux demo and have access to the file system. Ubuntu says this computer has a 320 GB hard disk with 3 objects: The first is a 105 MB Filesystem that appears to be blank. The second is 306 GB Filesystem that has a folder named RMTemp. The third object is labeled FACTORY_IMAGE and has several folders, including boot, hp, preload, recovery, $recycle.bin, and system volume information. There is also a folder containing recent personal digital photos on the FACTORY_IMAGE object. And, there's a file called bootmgr on the root of the FACTORY_IMAGE object.
I have these questions:
1. Does anyone know if Ubuntu is showing me everything on the disk?
2. Is there something better I could download to CD that would show me what's going on?
3. Is there a chance I can fix the system by copying BOOTMGR from the FACTORY_IMAGE object to someplace where it belongs?
4. Should I just tell the user her hard drive needs to be reformatted and Windows reinstalled?
Thanks for any ideas.