I seem to have somehow knackered by bootloader and/or windows installation, and running low on options!

(I'm pointing my finger at TrueImage!)

Running Win7 Ultimate, with a 256GB mSata drive & 8GB DDR3 Ram

When I turn on, I get an error telling me the configuration file was missing and pointed to winload.exe

I've moved on a bit from there though... I had bitlocker enabled, but have now manage to disable & decrypt the drive.

The message I get now is "An error occured while attmepting to read the boot configuration data File: \Boot\BCD"

I've created a USB drive with the windows restore image (as I have no optical drive). When it loads, it doesn't find any windows installations, and running 'repair' gives an error message.

If i open CMD, and run bootrec /FixMBR /FixBoot - these run OK, but doesn't solve the problem.
Further, I tried /ScanOS - and this did find the installation

I read to try running...

 

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

But this fails on the first step

 

Running a little low on options now.

Oddly, when I view the drive in diskpart, it shows zero space available.

I'm running xcopy to at least salvage something before causing more mess!

 

I'm reckoning it's a fresh install :(

Is there a way to download the media legit, and then plug in my license key?

I was going to upgrade to Win8 anyway (hence running true image!), but seems to can't download without being in your win7 environment grrr

You can follow the links here to get an iso from digitalriver, the offial MS supplier for 3rd party/OEM.

Thanks - that's where I ended up getting it from - but even that didn't work to fix it.

As I only upgraded my HD a few weeks ago, and did it via Disk Clone, I was able to write the image back to the new drive, and restore most of my personal files from it.
Other than about 3 days of my life I'll never get back, and lost of tagging in Picassa, no real harm done I don't think!

Something that's worth a try is to boot up using a recovery DVD or windows install media, go to repair then recovery console, change directory to X:\Sources\Recovery and run startrep.exe that does some fairly clever stuff where it can rebuild all the windows startup files including MBR, BCD, winload.exe fixes any incompatible drivers and corrupt registry settings, if that doesn't work then you might as well re-install!