Vista Wont boot, trouble booting Ubuntu too

Samaelryn

Member
Alright... I'm new to actually configuring linux myself so go easy on me.. I previously had Windblows Vista Ultinot working, but after installing Ubuntu to a seperate disk, I am no longer able to boot into Vista at all. I see the Vista windows loader option in GRUB, but all I get when I try this is an error 13 message or a message saying NTLDR not found. I can normally boot into Ubuntu just fine, and I have a Super Grub CD burnt and have tried using this and the Windblows Vista Ultinot disc to fix the MBR and Vista respectively... neither has worked...

Can someone help me work this through, preferabely from the ground up?
 
Hi Sam, welcome to NST.
When you installed Ubuntu, at the grub install stage there was an "advanced" button. If you'd used this you would have been given options about the grub install.
If you didn't use it, the default action of Ubuntu is to take over the boot process by overwriting the MBR so that it searches for grub instead of Vista's bootmgr.
You can use grub to boot Vista, or (with the help of EasyBCD 2.0) you can use bootmgr to boot Ubuntu.
Which system do you wish to be in charge ?

If you're trying to restore the Vista boot -
Boot from the Vista DVD, select "repair your computer" then "startup repair"
Do the above line 3 times (it only fixes one thing at a time) or until Vista boots unaided by the DVD.
In Vista Install EasyBCD 2.0 latest build
In the add/remove entries dialogue, use the Linux tab and add an entry for Ubuntu selecting it from the dropdown menu and ticking the "grub is not...." box (no need to tick the box if Ubuntu were on the same HDD as Vista)

If you want grub to be in charge, the error 13 is saying that you've got the wrong partition specified in the (hdx,y) notation.
The NTLDR message is a mystery. NTLDR is XP's boot manager, nothing to do with Vista, and is probably coming from an old MBR on one of your disks that previously contained an XP installation.

When you are in the grub menu, instead of selecting Vista, hit "e" to go into edit mode then select Vista, go to the root (hdx,y) line, put the cursor under the x and hit "tab".
You'll get a list of all the available valid disk entries.
Doing the same thing with the y value will give you a list of all the valid partitions in the currently selected x
By doing this and searching through all the options, you should be able to see which is the correct x,y combination to locate Vista.
In Ubuntu, edit the boot/grub/menu.lst to change the Vista entry to the x,y values you just discovered.
 
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When I installed Ubuntu, it was to the 120gb HDD, which did previously hold an XP installation... One that was beyond the point of no repair, if I wanted it working again I would have had to format the HDD and reinstall XP.. Instead I repartitioned the drive and installed Jaunty Jackalope.

When I've gone into the Startup Repair thing on the Vista CD in the past, it has not even detected Vista is installed. I'll give it a shot now and see if it'll work, then report back in a few minutes....


Right now it seems I need to focus on getting Vista Ultinot working again, then focus on getting the GRUB to be in charge of boot-up and chain vista's loader after that.... Will let you know how getting Vista working again goes in a bit.

Addendum:

Alright.... I just gave it a shot trying to use the CD to fix Vista's boot... No go. When I selected the 'repair my computer' option, it displayed a dialog box asking em to select which OS I wanted to repair, none were displayed... After clicking ok, I can not fix the startup or reload from a recent system recovery point.

I tried using the GRUB method you described, but after pointing GRUB to hd2,0 and telling it to boot, I got an error 13 and a message saying "BOOTMGR is missing", instead of "NTLDR is missing".

My Partition Tables, just in case they matter now or in the future:

/dev/sda
Partition 0: NTFS, Vista installation

/dev/sdb1
1MB Unallocated
1.36TB NTFS storage partition
2.49GB Unallocated

/dev/sdc1
Partition 0: ext3, Ubuntu 9.04 booting just fine on it's own with GRUB
Partition 1: extended
/dev/sdc6 27.96GB Fat32 Mount point: /gobetween
7.84mb Unallocated
/dev/sdc5 Linux swap



The HDD with Ubuntu on it now used to be a single NTFS partition with XP installed..
 
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If Vista is sda1, that's hd0,0, not 2,0. Error 13 still means you're looking in the wrong place.
There's sometimes a problem repairing the Vista boot, where it can't see the Vista to repair unless you temporarily disconnect the other HDDs, especially if the non-Vista HDD is IDE and Vista is SATA.
 
hd0,0 reported a different error when I'd tried to point the windows entry to that partition. I will check the Ubuntu entry and see what it points to.

Well, Ubuntu is on an IDE and Vista is on a SATA.. so I will try that when I get home from school later tonight... From what I've uncovered talking with staff and students here at college, it sounds like the boot.ini file has also been corrupted... If pulling out all but the Vista hard drive will help me to repair it's boot loader, I should be able to just plug the other drives back in and get GRUB to chain load into Windows.
 
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There is no boot.ini in Vista. Thats an XP file. The Vista BCD is its replacement.
Disconnect the IDE disk till you've finished repairing the Vista boot, then use EasyBCD 2.0 to add a Linux entry with the "grub is not...." box ticked.
 
I'd much rather use GRUB as the main boot loader than Windows... I have repaired my windows install, hopefully now when I reconnect my IDE drive I can get GRUB set up properly.

Addendum:

Vista is booting just fine, GRUB is the first bootloader I see, and I can successfully load into either operating system.. So for all major intents and purposes, I've solved the problem -with much help from this and a few other threads here on the forum about Windows and GRUB not playing nice together...

Now, the only hiccup I have to this being 100% complete instead of 99%, is that I have to manually change the windows loader entry in GRUB from hd(0,0) to hd(1,0) every time I want to boot windows... Can someone remind me of the location/name of the file I need to edit so I don't have to enter it every single time I want to boot to Vista?
 
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Now, the only hiccup I have to this being 100% complete instead of 99%, is that I have to manually change the windows loader entry in GRUB from hd(0,0) to hd(1,0) every time I want to boot windows... Can someone remind me of the location/name of the file I need to edit so I don't have to enter it every single time I want to boot to Vista?
You need to edit the Vista entry in the boot/grub/menu.lst on your Ubuntu partition. You will probably find it at the end of the file.
 
Alright... I'm new to actually configuring linux myself so go easy on me.. I previously had Windblows Vista Ultinot working, but after installing Ubuntu to a seperate disk, I am no longer able to boot into Vista at all. I see the Vista windows loader option in GRUB, but all I get when I try this is an error 13 message or a message saying NTLDR not found. I can normally boot into Ubuntu just fine, and I have a Super Grub CD burnt and have tried using this and the Windblows Vista Ultinot disc to fix the MBR and Vista respectively... neither has worked...

Can someone help me work this through, preferabely from the ground up?

hi sam backup what you can. reinstall vista. yeah i know. you can download a new
copy of ubuntu burn it to disk. when vista is running you can put your new ubuntu disk into d:/ drive. ubuntu will pop up and offer you choices. install ubuntu inside windows.let the cd do its thing.
you will have brand new dual boot. when you boot you can select windows or ubuntu.
it's worth the time. you could try other things but this way you will be all set.
keep it simple. SPARKS8@NYCAP.RR.COM in case you get stuck...
 
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