Restoring Windows bootloader

jeth

Member
When I initially set up my dual boot (Windows Vista/Ubuntu) setup, I followed the excellent instructions found here on this site. And everything has been working fine until today.

For some reason, I am now getting the GRUB menu first again. After selecting the Windows recovery option (the one at the bottom) I then get my Windows bootloader screen that shows me Vista and Ubuntu options, and if I leave it along, it times out and starts up Vista as before.

But I have been unable to get rid of the GRUB screen

I went through the steps in the second section of the writeup again, where I started Easy BCD (2.0.2), selected bootloader setup, and then install Vista bootloader to the MBR.

But upon restart, I still get the GRUB loader menu.

First, here's what I see in EasyBCD:
--------------------------------
There are a total of 2 entries listed in the bootloader.

Default: Microsoft Windows Vista
Timeout: 10 seconds
Boot Drive: C:\

Entry #1
Name: Microsoft Windows Vista
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

Entry #2
Name: Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit
BCD ID: {2b0b9bd7-4748-11de-8c72-bcfbe3caf0fe}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \NST\AutoNeoGrub0.mbr
-------------------------

and now what I see in Belarc Advisor (in case that helps):
------------------------
There are a total of 2 entries listed in the bootloader.

Default: Microsoft Windows Vista
Timeout: 10 seconds
Boot Drive: C:\

Entry #1
Name: Microsoft Windows Vista
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

Entry #2
Name: Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit
BCD ID: {2b0b9bd7-4748-11de-8c72-bcfbe3caf0fe}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \NST\AutoNeoGrub0.mbr

--------------------------------------1226.23 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
327.75 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH15F SCSI CdRom Device [CD-ROM drive]
MagicISO Virtual DVD-ROM0000 [CD-ROM drive]

IOI CF/MicroDrive Disk.. USB Device -- drive 2
IOI MS/MsPro Disk ... USB Device -- drive 5
IOI SD/MMC Disk ... USB Device -- drive 4
IOI SM/xD-Picture Disk.. USB Device -- drive 3
ST310005 28AS SCSI Disk Device (1000.20 GB) -- drive 0
WDC WD64 00AAKS-22A7B SCSI Disk Device (640.13 GB) -- drive 1

----------------------------
Any suggestions?

Thanks......
 
Thanks for response, Justin,

That will give me something to read and investigate further. Since I can boot into Windows through the second menu as I said, it looks like the second link in the one you mentioned is the approach I have to try.

What I have to do first, is make sure I am referring to the proper drive; I have two physical hard drives on the system. Otherwise I could easily make things worse. It's time for a full backup before trying anything drastic. :smile:

Here's something even more confusing:

On the GRUB menu, there are "two" Windows entries at the bottom:
A - Windows Vista Loader
B - Windows Recovery Manager.

BUT, "A" takes me to a Gateway recovery option that wants to restore my system to it's factory state; definitely NOT what I want.

An "B" takes me to the normal Windows bootloader menu what shows Vosta and Ubuntu.

I tried to think back to when I first noticed the problem, and it was on first boot this morning. I had accidentally left a camera SD card plugged in last night, and it appeared that it was trying to boot from that. This is strange because this motherboard doesn't have support for booting from other than hard drives, CDs or floppies. No USB or other boot options are listed.

When I removed it, and restarted the system, that's when I first noticed the GRUB boot manager.

BTW, the attached BMP file shows what Acronis Disk Image says about my drive setup.
 

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  • disks.bmp
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Is this a simple case of booting from the wrong drive ?
You appear to be booting directly from the Linux HDD, not Windows.
Try checking the BIOS HDD boot sequence and make sure the Windows HDD is first.
(If you've been disconnecting/reconnecting HDDs, it can change the boot sequence without your knowledge or intent)
 
Thanks for suggestion, Terry,

That was it!

I went into the BIOS setup and reordered the two hard drives and I now go directly to the Windows boot loader.

But I haven't been playing with my drives in a long time so the only thing I can figure that might have messed things up somehow is that mistake in leaving an SD card plugged in last night. It only contained the standard file structure for camera pictures, and since this motherboard doesn't support USB drives (which is where many memory cards are really attached internally) I have no idea why it would suddenly want to try and boot from one.

Again, thank a lot for the suggestion.....it did the trick.

Joe
 
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