Laptop stuck in BOotmgr missing

[komatias]

Harddisk is probably fubar

[lucan07]

If you have access to another computer and a USB flash or hard drive create a bootable drive and see if it boots to get you as far as bios.

[komatias]

If you have access to another computer and a USB flash or hard drive create a bootable drive and see if it boots to get you as far as bios.

Bios does not need anything to boot to. It lives in the motherboard. If you can start the computer and press, F2,Del, F12 or whatever the computer instructs you to press to get to setup, it will give you bios.

Here is a thought.... do you by chance have a USB stick plugged in? If the computer is set to boot from USB, it may be looking at the USB stick to find windows or a bootable partition.

[lucan07]

While BIOS (basic input output system) does live on motherboard and needs nothing to boot it does need to satisfy certain conditions before allowing you to access it.
It processes in the way listed below the order of operations first of which is (POST) see explanation and order below, in many cases failing at g) BIOS may freeze before reaching i) the first point at which a user interface is provided allowing access to both keyboard and screen etc which are user interface devices.

1) POST power on self test, the principal duties of the main BIOS during POST are as follows:
a) verify CPU registers
b) verify the integrity of the BIOS code itself
c) verify basic components like DMA, timer, interrupt controller
d) find, size, and verify system main memory
e) initialize BIOS
f) pass control to other specialized extension BIOSes (if installed)
g) identify, organize, and select which devices are available for booting (IF IT FAILS HERE)
h) discover, initialize, and catalog all system buses and devices
i) provide a user interface for system's configuration (IT MAY NOT REACH HERE)