• Can't boot Windows 7.
    17 replies, posted
Here's the situation: I had 3 partitions on my main hard drive. 1 for regular Windows 7, 1 for Windows 8 alpha and 1 for data. Somehow the Win 8 one became the boot drive, meaning that the boot loader was there. I wanted to repartition it and turn it into a linux partition, so I made the win 7 partition 'active' and removed the Win 8 partition, hoping that the Startup Recovery in the Win 7 dvd would just make the Win 7 partition bootable. Yeah.... It failed. It found some startup error, appearently fixed it, rebooted and it doesn't boot anymore. Startup recovery doesn't find anything anymore. I also tried following this tutorial: [url]http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Recovering+the+Vista+Bootloader+from+the+DVD[/url] But no luck even there. I'm currently installing Fedora in the hopes that it's grub will discover Windows and magically repair everything. But I doubt it will. How can I get back into Windows, without completely reinstalling? [b]Edit:[/b] This is how the hard drive currently looks: [quote][img]http://i.imgur.com/cdgrz.png[/img][/quote] I also have another hard drive that has Win XP x64, ReactOS, Windows Thin and now Fedora, but all of those also used my win 8 partition as a boot partition. Even xp's ntldr was there. No idea how it all got there. Fedora, ofcourse should boot now. (I hope :ohdear:) [quote][img]http://i.imgur.com/hjErS.png[/img][/quote]
Try EasyBCD.
[QUOTE=Protocol7;31311404]Try EasyBCD.[/QUOTE] Kinda hard without Windows already booted. Fedora works now, I'll try to run it from Mono. (basicaly .NET that works on more than just windows.)
[QUOTE=DeadKiller987;31312234]Kinda hard without Windows already booted. Fedora works now, I'll try to run it from Mono. (basicaly .NET that works on more than just windows.)[/QUOTE] Try to run it in Wine then, I don't know. Make a BartsPE disk and run it from that.
[QUOTE=DeadKiller987;31312234]Kinda hard without Windows already booted. Fedora works now, I'll try to run it from Mono. (basicaly .NET that works on more than just windows.)[/QUOTE] You can't just run any random Windows binary with Mono. You can just add this to your grub configuration at /boot/grub/menu.lst [code] title Windows rootnoverify (hd2,0) chainloader +1 [/code] Just change the (hd2,0) part to whatever your hard drive/partition is.
hello, i'm new here on this site so i hope that somebody can help me. i have a problem with my laptop i installed windows 7 on my laptop and i had a crash afther about 5 minutes i don't know what happend . so i try to install vista again buth its seems to me that my laptop is still not working like it shud be. is there anyone that can help me how i can install windows 7 again because my windows 7 that i had i'm scared to use it again and i realy don't know what i can do to fix my laptop like it runned before. i hope someone can help me. and thank you already grtz san [editline]25th July 2011[/editline] hello, i'm new here on this site so i hope that somebody can help me. i have a problem with my laptop i installed windows 7 on my laptop and i had a crash afther about 5 minutes i don't know what happend . so i try to install vista again buth its seems to me that my laptop is still not working like it shud be. is there anyone that can help me how i can install windows 7 again because my windows 7 that i had i'm scared to use it again and i realy don't know what i can do to fix my laptop like it runned before. i hope someone can help me. and thank you already grtz san
[QUOTE=Protocol7;31312301]Try to run it in Wine then, I don't know. Make a BartsPE disk and run it from that.[/QUOTE] You can't run .NET programs in wine, it doesn't work that way. BartPE is old as shit, doesn't let you install a new .NET framework on it and therefore its useless. I have a WinPE disk made from a Win7 source, however even that can't install .Net. [editline]25th July 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=PvtCupcakes;31312731]You can't just run any random Windows binary with Mono. You can just add this to your grub configuration at /boot/grub/menu.lst [code] title Windows rootnoverify (hd2,0) chainloader +1 [/code] Just change the (hd2,0) part to whatever your hard drive/partition is.[/QUOTE] I know how to do that, that's not the problem. The grub chainloader has nothing to boot. The Windows bootloader is gone. I need to repair that.
Do you know where the Windows boot loader is located? If so you could reinstall it from the DVD however you would then have to reinstall GRUB. bootrec /fixboot bootrec /fixmbr boosect /nt60 X: X: being the letter where the boot loader is. I don't think you need all of those command, I usually do them all at once just in case though. Note: In Windows RE the disk lettering could be different (It's lettered in order how they're plugged into the motherboard and which partitions come first). In command open notepad and hit Ctrl+O and navigate to Computer to see if the drive letter is different.
Well im thinking that its trying to boot into windows 8 still just hit i think it was F8 on startup and see if your computer says windows 8 if it does try booting into another and fixing it then O.o
[QUOTE=Nyu;31327016]Well im thinking that its trying to boot into windows 8 still just hit i think it was F8 on startup and see if your computer says windows 8 if it does try booting into another and fixing it then O.o[/QUOTE] He removed the 8 partition for Linux. That bootloader is gone.
Yeah if you can just run a Windows install disc, you can use its terminal to repair the bootloader. A little easier (and plausible apparently) than my previous solution.
[QUOTE=Panda X;31326757]Do you know where the Windows boot loader is located? If so you could reinstall it from the DVD however you would then have to reinstall GRUB. bootrec /fixboot bootrec /fixmbr boosect /nt60 X: X: being the letter where the boot loader is. I don't think you need all of those command, I usually do them all at once just in case though. Note: In Windows RE the disk lettering could be different (It's lettered in order how they're plugged into the motherboard and which partitions come first). In command open notepad and hit Ctrl+O and navigate to Computer to see if the drive letter is different.[/QUOTE] I did bootrec /fixboot bootrec /fixmbr and bootsect /nt60 all They didn't do anything. Somehow it still won't boot. Grub can't boot Windows either. Some of my My Win 7 main partition simply stays at a black screen, the bootloader just won't load! The bootsector is there and it's the 'active' partition, bootmgr is there and so is BCD, but it just doesn't work! The Windows Thin install on the other hand... The bootmgr is there, but the /boot/ folder is missing. I'll try to copy that from Win 7 now. I gotta say, Linux just doesn't fuck up so bad!
Okay, I finally booted my win 7. Not without problems though. Here's what I currently do. I boot my pc from my old hard drive to grub, that boots Windows Thin's boot loader also on the old hard drive that then boots Windows 7 on the new hard drive. This is not desirable as I don't want to have to have my old hard drive in there at all. I can't boot directly from my new one at all, it's like the boot sector doesn't exist. I've ran bootsect.exe countless times now, it won't do anything. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.
If you get EasyBCD it has an option to completely reinstall the bootloader, you can try that.
[QUOTE=Panda X;31366623]If you get EasyBCD it has an option to completely reinstall the bootloader, you can try that.[/QUOTE] Nope. Didn't work. I'm beginning to think that the partition itself is to blame. Neither the bios, nor grub can read the boot sector no matter how many times I rewrite it. If I wanted to make a new partition, could I move Windows to it somehow? [editline]27th July 2011[/editline] Also grub no longer works. Great.
This might be a last resort, but if you have enough space you could install 7 on a spare partition so it'd install a new bootloader and use it. The thing is I'm not entirely sure if it'd create that 100MB partition on a pre-formatted disk for WinRE and the bootloader.
[QUOTE=Panda X;31372878]This might be a last resort, but if you have enough space you could install 7 on a spare partition so it'd install a new bootloader and use it. The thing is I'm not entirely sure if it'd create that 100MB partition on a pre-formatted disk for WinRE and the bootloader.[/QUOTE] Nah, it doesn't make that partition on a pre-formated drive, however that's a great idea! Anyway I could manually make that partition?
I'm happy to report that I've resolved all of my issues by making a small boot partition that will contain nothing but boot files. Thanks for the help guys!
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