restore windows boot sector

Hello

Can you explain further like what windows system did you ahve on previously ie win xp or win 7 or both or even vista.

When i started Lucid i had win xp and win 7. I didnt uninstall win 7 but proceeded to install ubuntu over it. After successful installation i found i could not get rid of win 7 loader (yes microsoft uses grub menu just like ubuntu does) and that i could not boot into win xp.

The solution was to initiall boot into ubuntu and bring up a terminal and type sudo update-grub and password but that didnt help after restarting as win xp could still not find a missing dll file. So all i did was re-install ubuntu and bazinga it worked! However ubuntu grub still displays win xp as a win 7 entry.

The problem that i learnt is that i shouldnt have installed ubuntu straight away ie i should have deleted win 7 partition, rebooted and then install ubuntu in that same partition that win 7 was in.

Hi :)

There is often confusion about this.

The Mbr belongs to the physical hard-drive, not to an operating system. Each hard-drive has only 1 Mbr and the one on the Primary Master hard-drive does little more than just point to which boot-loader to use.

Unfortunately the term used to set the Mbr to point at the right boot-loader is "fix" but this is a different usage of the word from normal. In normal usage "fix" implies the thing was broken but in this usage it is like "fixing the result of a race" (to help with gambling).

The Windows boot-loader is extremely difficult to work with and Windows resents the presence of other operating systems on your machine. MicroSquish is afraid of the threat that Ubuntu and linux generally poses to their market dominance and at a massive 1-2% of the market you can see them trying a lot of actions to fight their way out of their corner.

By contrast Ubuntu's linux boot-loader's automatically detect and include any other operating systems as choices in it's boot-menu. Occasionally, with the recent introduction of grub2, we have found that grub2 sometimes needs to be updated or sometimes even reinstalled in order to correct a problem about all that. The newer, updated grub2 has been fixed (as in mended this time) so that it can pick-up other operating systems.

So you can "fix" the Mbr to point back at Windows but then you wont be able to boot into Ubuntu. Please let us know what you want to do. Do you want to remove Ubuntu or do you just want Windows to show up in the boot-menu? Either way is fine for us
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

On 05/14/2010 04:17 AM, Tom wrote:
> Your question #110945 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/110945
>
> Tom proposed the following answer:
> Hi :)
>
> There is often confusion about this.
>
> The Mbr belongs to the physical hard-drive, not to an operating system.
> Each hard-drive has only 1 Mbr and the one on the Primary Master hard-
> drive does little more than just point to which boot-loader to use.
>
> Unfortunately the term used to set the Mbr to point at the right boot-
> loader is "fix" but this is a different usage of the word from normal.
> In normal usage "fix" implies the thing was broken but in this usage it
> is like "fixing the result of a race" (to help with gambling).
>
> The Windows boot-loader is extremely difficult to work with and Windows
> resents the presence of other operating systems on your machine.
> MicroSquish is afraid of the threat that Ubuntu and linux generally
> poses to their market dominance and at a massive 1-2% of the market you
> can see them trying a lot of actions to fight their way out of their
> corner.
>
> By contrast Ubuntu's linux boot-loader's automatically detect and
> include any other operating systems as choices in it's boot-menu.
> Occasionally, with the recent introduction of grub2, we have found that
> grub2 sometimes needs to be updated or sometimes even reinstalled in
> order to correct a problem about all that. The newer, updated grub2 has
> been fixed (as in mended this time) so that it can pick-up other
> operating systems.
>
> So you can "fix" the Mbr to point back at Windows but then you wont be able to boot into Ubuntu. Please let us know what you want to do. Do you want to remove Ubuntu or do you just want Windows to show up in the boot-menu? Either way is fine for us
> Good luck and regards from
> Tom :)
>
>

Thank you for your response. I am a dedicated user of Ubuntu. Part of
the problem was with the Microsoft partition. I have found the answers
that I needed to get the dual boot right. Some on Microsoft's web page,
"http:/support.microsoft.com/kb/927392" and some from Ubuntu's site.

I rarely use Windows, but there is some work that I do that requires
Windows programs that I have not been able to get to work in wine. I
fixed the problem with the following steps.

    I ran "bootrec /FixBoot". Once this was this was done Windows
    would boot, but there was no grub menu to use to choose Ubuntu.

    I followed the instructions on page
    "https:/help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2" to reinstall grub2 on the
    system for the Ubunto partition. Once this was done I could access
    both operating systems. :)

Jim

Hi :))

Brilliant, nicely fixed :))
Congrats and regards from
Tom :)