Re: Ubuntu 10.10 + Windows 7 dual boot nightmare
Could you check something please?
Your recovery partition will most likely have an option that it can be accessed (run) by tapping a certain key at boot. On mine I think it's F10, on others it can be F11 or ctrl + F11. Find out which key yours is and try tapping it at boot. If the recovery starts up you will see a black screen with white writing near the bottom which says "Loading Windows Files" and a grey progress bar which turns white as files are loaded. If this proceeds to the recovery environment you will get choices re: recovering your system.
I would guess that if you get this far your recovery will work.
If you don't get any of this I would surmise that grub may have slightly over-written something the recovery partition needed. In that case it is now probably useless without testdisk or something similar.
If you get to the bluey-green background of the recovery environment you can cancel it without changing anything.
Re: Ubuntu 10.10 + Windows 7 dual boot nightmare
Yes its F7 and pressing it right after the dell boot logo (checked it in the manual) unfortunately doesn't work, instead the grub menu loads up. Anyways, I'm willing to take the risk and try to fix it with testdisk as you proposed, but I haven't got the slightest clue of what to do. Help is needed!
Re: Ubuntu 10.10 + Windows 7 dual boot nightmare
Re: Ubuntu 10.10 + Windows 7 dual boot nightmare
Thanx for that. Had a quick look, and to tell you the truth I don't clearly see how to use the tool to remove grub from sda1,2...Something I miss here for sure.
Re: Ubuntu 10.10 + Windows 7 dual boot nightmare
The link is to recover the partition, not remove grub, as such.
Re: Ubuntu 10.10 + Windows 7 dual boot nightmare
Followed the guide but according to testdisk the boot sector and backup boot sector in both sda1,2 are OK (boot sectors are identical. Of course I repaired them anyway, but no difference) so I don't see what else to look for...
At this state I'm so stubborn and want to fix it that I would try any possible thing that you may think!
Re: Ubuntu 10.10 + Windows 7 dual boot nightmare
If recovery of backup does not work, testdisk also has a rebuild function.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Data_...d_damaged_NTFS
If Backup BS isn't available, choose RebuildBS.
You may also be able to use windows tools to create a new boot sector. Do you have a win7 repairCD?
Re: Ubuntu 10.10 + Windows 7 dual boot nightmare
No W7 repair CD unfortunately, neither a CD Drive! Based on link (Recovery of a Dell Computer section), I tried to declare my DellUtility partition as "de", wrote the changes on disk, rebooted but for some strange reason the changes were not saved! Repeated that a few times, but no success! Maybe a testdisk bug? I don't know.
Rebuild and backup bs? Where are those?
Re: Ubuntu 10.10 + Windows 7 dual boot nightmare
Testdisk has it in its instructions, but I have not used it so I do not know all the details.
You can download a windows repair CD from this:
If your PC did not come with a complete Vista or Win7 installation CD, you can download a Recovery Disc at the following links:
Windows Vista/7 Recovery Disc - for repairs only
http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/window...disc-download/
http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/window...-repair-discs/
Vista/7 will not repair XP (they create the boot sectors differently) but can run chkdsk.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392
The only problem I had was that I could not copy to a USB easily. I tried a variety of ways from Ubuntu, but the only way that worked for me was to create the CD and use the CD to create the bootable USB. If you do not have a CD, then you would have to use another computer to create a USB version. If you have a working windows somewhere it may be easier with that but I do not know.