Windows Vista: BOOTMGR is missing!
I bought an additional hard drive last week to increase my storage capacity and to add a partition to backup data. I decided to move my Windows Vista installation to the second harddrive. Linux and grub are installed on the first one.
Vista creates a Boot directory when it setups the MBR. I noticed that Vista does not create this directory when it is installed on the second harddrive, probably because the boot loader is on the first one. So after I restored grub to handle both windows and linux, when I tried to boot Vista, I saw the message "BOOTMGR is missing!".
The boot directory cannot be seen on Windows systems, I verified its presence on my Linux system with the Windows partition mounted.
I found a little trick to force windows Vista to create boot directory and bootmgr, I configured the bios to disable the first harddrive. Then I repaired the windows Vista installation with the dvd, the repair program created the boot directory and bootmgr program. Finally, I re-enabled the first harddrive.
It's important to add a small setting to grub configuration to make Windows believe it is launched from the first harddrive. Grub is able to change the bios harddrives order virtually.
title=Windows Vista rootnoverify (hd1,0) map (hd0) (hd1) map (hd1) (hd0) chainloader +1
