"reboot and select proper boot device" ?

[bankster55]

O.K. now do the repair my PC thing from DVD - see if it can find your install

 

[Reven]

OK putting disc in drive. ( sorry I'm late on this, I was hitting refresh and didnt notice we're on page 3.

 

[Reven]

This time it searched for an OS and found one. It prompted me to let it repair and restart, which I did. However, it just restarted and its still saying BOOTMGR missing. I dont think it repaired. Should I try again?

 

[bankster55]

so, did you try the drive without DVD?

 

[Reven]

Yes I did. Without the DVD it still says 'Bootmgr is missing'. When I used the DVD, it saw the OS and noticed it needed repairs. It prompted me to 'repair and restart'. I clicked on it and it restarted. Same problems though. I did not notice a repair FYI.

 

[bankster55]

Now that it can detect your install thats much better (active did that)
At this point success is assured, with many options avail

You should try to ignore warnings and get past repair my computer to startup repair option after O/S detect
At this point normally, you should be able to boot to windows PE with just DVD and no hassles
However, I know absolutely nothing about upgrade disks - never had one, dont want one - you might want to try a real DVD

Anyways, put back in bad drive to backup PC, do the controlPanel/folder options/view changes I mentioned before
[This will be happening on your C drive but will also apply to no boot drive]
>check show hiden files and folders
>uncheck hide protected system files
>lower UAC control slider to bottom
(may need to be done as Admin user - if problems, search for take ownership reg hack on google)
Then in C: (C itself) there will be a 374kb bootmgr file showing
copy and paste this file to F: (itself) >paste it into the letter F
(bootmgr is a generic file and a very strange one at that - not specific to any config)

Sorry, gotta go now

Followup Edit:
Everytime you boot into Windows with a diff HDD setup or a newly formatted HDD, it recreates a WINDOWS volume serial NUMBER (not Vol label or HDD Volume firmware ID xxxx-xxxx). Then you get a message that Windows has found your new device and its ready for use, then requests a reboot to solidify the changes made to the registry. This is so even if its the exact same HDD, but with reboot reconfigured volume labels or partition letters.
(This is also why, after changing out a HDD, it may make you non genuine by forcing a new hardware hash)

Theoretically when you placed the bad SSD behind the single partition 80GB SATA drive in your backup PC, the SATA HDD should have already been DSK0_VOL1, and your SSD 80GB should have oriented itself something like DSK0_VOL3, or DSK1_VOL1. But it didnt, they were reversed, and the SSD single system partition noted as F should have been D, but the DVD burner letter had already taken D - which incidentally is a good reason to make your opticals drives something like X or Y. So, the volume labels and partition letters and the resulting volume numbers created during format on the SSD and/or the SATA were screwed up from all the previous changing around. Note you can have DSK0 multiple times accross multiple HDD in the same PC if the drives were already DSK0 somewhere else, but Windows will reset partition letters. If you also have logicals, this will really mix things up horribly as far as associations go (upon the first fresh boot), which is why I never make extended with logicals. One should change Vol labels (and reboot) to reflect current situation/boot order (DSK0 DSK1 DSK2 etc.) IMMEDIATELY after adding or subtracting A HDD, or Windows may do it for you when you least expect it. If you plug in a new HDD that already has partitions, it may look right upon first boot, but you will not see the reshuffle until the SECOND boot.
http://delphi.about.com/od/windowsshellapi/a/volumeserial.htm
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/hard_disk_serialno.aspx

Normally when a bootmgr missing notice appears, and the O/S install can be detected, all it takes is the repair startup option to fix things quickly. That function merely looks at the booting files and reinserts (copies) bootmgr on the DVD to the found install root. However it needs to have the right Volume label and partition info correctly preset to put it in the right place.
Putting bootmgr on a partition named F when the booting O/S will not allow that on a single big partition single HDD install and thusly change it anyways, is seen as non actionable.
So the first repair attempt changed now solitary SSD HDD (Vol label currently DSK0_VOL1) to letter C, and created a new Volume Number
And when you rebooted the changes stuck, you redid the repair, then DVD installed bootmgr in new C.
And this was with the most simple of config - one big partition only.
So its always a good idea to try the repair once, twice or even 3 times, wth a reboot between each, depending on the complexity of you original setup, so that repair can sort things out acceptably to O/S protocols.

Now here's the Win 7 DVD disk with the bootmgr file it uses to repair things with showing in root. Bootsect.exe is in "boot" folder:

Heres boot files as they appear on 100MB reserved partition with folder options altered
(not much is there?)

Heres booting files on system install partition (no reserved)

Heres the take ownership registry trick to allow you to move bootmgr around if you wish
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...ership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/

i always use Partition Table Doctor V3.5 app to fix/recover partition table screwups. Sadly this sw is no longer avail (bought out by Easeus), but can still be found on Google. A real lifesaver indeed.
There is even a floppy bootable version for when your O/S wont load due to partition probs.

And my fav cloner Casper has a volume table fixer - kind of handy if you think about what cloning does
http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/smartclone.aspx

And if you are multibooting, screw up the booting config, and can at least get into one O/S then EASYBCD will fix you right up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdjNfXZjRxs
http://neosmart.net/software.php

 

[Reven]

Yes! After another repair attempt, the PC works! Woohoo!

I considered trying to slowly reactivate my PC, but decided against it. I dont want to f*** anything up right before I leave.

A last question: What should I reactivate first? I'm guessing I should first enable all the Marvell controllers I turned off in the BIOS. Then, I should slowly reattach the hard drives with the new Seagate 2tb drive last. Would that be right?

Secondly, I'd like to offer a huge thanks. This took a helluva lot of your time and I appreciate that. I was talking with my father about the level of support I was getting out here for free, and he couldnt believe it. When he asked why a complete stranger was helping me, I was at a loss of words... Once again, thank you.