Hi Need Help

I have a Dell 1735 Studio Laptop with Vista. I have the message
Bootmgr is missing. Hit ctr alt and del to restart. This happened after I tried to restore back to factory settings and it shut down unexpectedly.
I tried rebooting with the installation disk and went into the BIOS and changed the boot sequence so it would boot first from the DVD/CD Drive but I can hear it spin then it stops and I get the message again. I bought an external DVD ROM drive and put the Installation disk in that and tried to boot from that, I first went to the BIOS and changed it to the USB Storage to boot from and then tried the CD Drive. It can't get past the message.
Any suggestions?
I'm know a little about computers all self taught but I don't know how to fix this and I hate to get raked over the coals and take it somewhere to get it fixed but if I have to I guess I will.
thanks

 

Hi,

If every time you try to boot you get bootmgr is missing then the laptop is always trying to boot from the HD. You have to find a way to get it to boot from the installation disc again. Try F12 during the Dell screen to get a one time boot menu where you can select DVD/CD as the boot device and see if it will boot from the installation CD. If it does you want to select Repair to see if it can fix the bootmgr error. (Try it with the internal DVDROM first as it is most reliable then if no luck try the USB DVDRom.)

 

Hi
I did try using F12 and going to the DVD/CD Drive I can hear it spin then it stops and I get the Boot manager is missing message again.
When I plug in the USB DVD ROM Drive nothing happens. I know it works because I hooked it up to my other computer and it was fine.
So this is where I am stuck.

 

When you did the factory recovery were you using this same installation disc? I want to make sure this disc has booted in the past. Can you boot another computer from the disc? (Don't do any type of recovery on the other computer just see if the disc is recognized and then eject it and restart.)

Do you happen to know if your laptop is running Vista 32 or 64bit version?

 

Hi
It is running 32 bit. The disk seems fine. I put it in this computer that I am using now
and could see it would be bootable from the dvd/cd. I used the disk before on my other computer the Dell 1735 studio laptop Vista to reinstall about a year and a half ago when it caught a nasty virus. It was fine and everything went smooth.
But now it simply wont boot
By the way I tried to use factory settings from the F8 command when this all happened. I can't seem to get to F8 anymore. Just F2 Setup and F12.

 

I'm trying to think what to do next. Obviously, we need to get it to boot to a disc. Do you have any other bootable discs of any type you could test to see if F12 will allow a boot to disc?

Other than that all I can think is to copy that disc to a fresh DVD and see if the new copy will be bootable. Or maybe download a Vista Recovery disc file and burn that to CD/DVD and see if you have better luck with that one.