Not sure if anyone's run into this yet...

wickid_d

Member
I'm not even sure how I managed to do this.. Guess it's what I get for playing around with bootloaders, EasyBCD, and such, lol.. I have Win7 and Ubuntu 10.04 dual-booting just fine, but here's my problem (It's more or less a matter of cosmetics)..

I boot Win7 to the menu, two choices:

Code:
Windows 7
Ubuntu
I need to do some work in Ubuntu, so naturally, I select Ubuntu.. and it boots to Grub.., 5 choices here (customized):

Code:
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (recovery mode)
Windows 7
Windows 7 (recovery mode)
memtest x86+
(or whatever it says as I'm pulling this from my brain somewhere, lol)

And I forget that I needed to finish something in Win7 before going into Ubuntu, so, again, naturally, I pick Windows 7..

Instead of booting to the original menu, it boots to this:
Code:
Windows 7 (which boots fine)
Ubunto 10.04 LTS
(yes, I typod at one point while using EasyBCD, and this doesn't work to boot back into Ubuntu, gives me some error saying it can't find something or other, please press enter continue)

Ok, now there's the explanation of my boot menu setups..

My question is, part a) how do I have 2 different Win7 boot menus? and part b) How can I fix it so I can flip-flop back and forth because I'm having one of my hyper-caffeinated A.D.D moments (obviously the linux grub menu is fine)? (oh, look, something shiny.. :lup: anyway..)

Any help is appreciated! :smile: And thanks for bearing with me and my silliness.. :??
~Wickid_D~
 
Do you have W7 installed with an unlettered partition called "system reserved" ?
Is it "active" "system" in Disk Management ?
Do you have a hidden \boot folder on that partition and on your W7 partition ?
 
Computer Guru, I checked out that link you gave me, and either you did not understand my post, or did not read through it entirely.. I have 2 different boot menus for Win7, and then the static menu for Ubuntu which came up the right way every time, and worked. Nonetheless, ty for trying to help. :smile:
Terry, this is a toshiba partition layout, spare the fact that I shrunk my /dev/sda2 to make room at the end of the drive for Ubuntu, so I have /dev/sda1 (1.5G) that is unlettered in Win7, called "Recovery Partition" in disk manager, but no, it's not marked system/active, but does have a non-hidden boot folder. /dev/sda2 (appx 190G) is my actual Win7 OS install, which is marked how it should be, with a hidden boot folder. /dev/sda3 is the ACTUAL 8G recovery partition (never understood why they have that first partition, as this one seems to do all the work), which also is unlettered, has a non-hidden boot folder, and is NOT marked system/active. And then, of course, /dev/sda4 which is devoted to the linux side of things. The only one marked system/active is /dev/sda2, as it should be. I know you're asking these questions to try and help me, so I hope this helps you in helping me, lol. :grinning:
 
Can you check which partition is marked "system" in Disk Management, when you boot W7 by the 2 different roots.
I'm guessing that the roundabout route is finding a different BCD than the direct one.
(you can also check by using File > select BCD store from EasyBCD and looking inside each of the boot folders on your various partitions)
 
Since last post, (sorry it took so long to get back, but I've been wickid busy) I've actually used a combination of EasyBCD and Partition Wizard to fix all of this, by making sure all the first 3 primary partitions were assigned drive letters, unhiding the last one, and removing the BCD store off of the first one (there wasn't any on the last one), so now the only BCD store is on c:\ a.k.a. /dev/sda2, as it should be, and the flip-flop back and forth between windows bootloader and grub is working as it should. I did have to set the other 2 system partitions back to how they were via Partition Wizard BEFORE the re-setup of BCD, so it didn't recreate the problem. So, as far as this thread goes, this problem has been solved and this can be capped. Thanks for the questions and everything, it's what got me thinking of a strategy on how to fix this in the first place. I'm actually going for a triple boot system now (wish me luck), with Win 7, Ubuntu, and WinXP SP3, as I'm getting into the nitty gritty of cellphone programming, and some of the tools I need don't work right with Win7 (one of them actually causes a BSOD on 7, yikes! lol), but the point here is that I'll keep that in mind about manually selecting the BCD store, and thank you for the tip on that! :grinning: I may give up, and let BCD handle ALL of the bootloading, by actually installing it as the bootloader (seems a pretty nifty idea by NeoSmart, tbqh, imho) You all rock! TYVM for such a great little program!! I wish it had been out YEARS ago, back in the days of 98/2000/XP/Slackware 7 quad booting (yes, I actually had a system set up like that! lol), would have made the process SOOOO much easier, lol Ok, now I'm rambling, TTYAL!!
 
UGH!! I'm currently writing from my XP installation because... well, ok, got the triple boot done, now I'm missing the "Repair your computer" option under the F8 menu for Win7, I've used the disc from my toshiba set to try and fix the boot menu, but it didn't work.. *scratches head* I used the Win XP cd to at least get into this installation (simply cuz it starts the fastest on this system).. Sooo... does BCD block this out, or is there something I'm overlooking on how to fix this? Thanks in advance for any help! :smile:
 
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Its a custom option your OEM well have installed. If its gone missing, its not very easily repaired. However, that feature just provides a hard drive version of the recovery tools you'll find on your Windows disc or our recovery disc.
 
Yeah, I actually managed to fix it, by starting up with the Toshiba recovery disc set I made. With the first disc (NOT the driver & app one), I booted up to the Win7 recovery options and used the command prompt option, and bcdedit and bootrec commands (for those new to Win7/Vista, I highly recommend learning these commands as they are basically the same as the fixmbr and fixboot of the past, but with a LOT more options). I had to reboot into Win7 normal and redo my EasyBCD steps to get all my OSs back on the menu, but after that, everything was exactly how I wanted it. So now, I'm triple booting with a (fairly) easy way to recover. I may write a tut for anyone interested, but that's the steps in a nutshell.

Thanks to all of you for all of your help!! :smile: You all are so eager and willing to help, and friendly! This is probably the best forum I've been in for help - too bad that right now I can't really focus on helping myself, as I was trying to get this lappy how I wanted it in order to do what I needed and still be able to job hunt.

Take care!

Sincerely,
~Wickid_D~
 
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