How To Fix “BOOTMGR is missing” Error in Vista and Windows 7

Fixing the "BOOTMGR is missing" error isn't too hard; here's how.

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The day before yesterday I was testing out a program with several system utilities built in. One of its components left my computer in a bit of a mess – no icons anywhere and other assorted woes. I had set a system restore point before I ran the program, so I thought I’d do a system restore. System restore gave me a message that it couldn’t restore my files. I decided to restore a disc image I had made a short while back. When I booted up the computer I got a message:
BOOTMGR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart
I stared at it the white letters on the black background for a few minutes, while the cursor blinked back at me. After some searching (on another computer) I had some solutions.
Barring any hardware errors, here’s how to fix that error:

• Insert your Windows Vista or Windows 7 disk into your DVD player and restart your computer.
• The next screen you see should have the Language, Time and Currency and Keyboard boxes.
• In the lower left side there are two options: “What to know before installing Windows” and “Repair your computer.”
• Click on “Repair your computer”
• Windows will then try to find the installation directory for Vista or Windows 7, depending on what you have.
• Next up is a screen with a box called Recovery Options. Click the first option, Startup Repair.
• You’ll see a Startup Repair box with the message “Startup Repair is checking your system for problems…”
• When it’s done, it will prompt you to reboot. If there is more than one problem it may reboot again to continue repairing.
• At this point, you can remove the DVD, reboot and everything should be working.

Two sites I found helpful are BOOTMGR is Missing at about.com and cyberstorms How to fix "BOOTMGR is missing" in Windows Vista
If the method outlined above doesn't work, try Solution #2 at the cyberstorm link.
Oh, restoring the disc image went fine and all is well. All my data was backed up (somewhere other than the hard drive Windows is on) so that was one thing I didn't need to worry about. Windows Vista and Windows 7 are the only Windows operating systems where this message appears; XP users don't have to worry about this one.