Good morning all,
It looks like I'm not alone with Vista laptops not supplying recovery disk as on my Acer laptop.
Because mine came with on half gig of memory (criminal I know when running Vista) I explored other options prior to considering purchasing more memory.
First, someone gave me a Fedora 7 disk which I installed as a dual boot. This worked fine until I got the bright idea for speedy Linux OS and found Puppy Linux. I did not install to the HD or any partition, I simply booted from a CD first then a flash drive. Everything worked fine at this point!
The problems started when I re-partitioned the HD adding a partition to make room for any files I might need space for when I run Puppy. To do this I shrank the Fedora partition.
This was my fatal mistake. I shrunk the Fedora partition too small and lost my Grub splash screen apparently damaging the MBR. I was able to fix this in Puppy, or so I thought.
To make a long story shorter, when I select windows from my Grub screen it just sits there after the "Chainloader +1" line.
I tried the System Restore in the WIKI, but it returned could be found. This sounds like a lesson learned for Vista users, create your system restore points.
I tried running the "Automated Repair" (step 2 in the WIKI)from the "Windows Vista Recovery Disk Download" software and it failed, saying it fixed the problem but it hadn't.
That would take me to step 3, but without a disk I don't know where to retrieve the bootsect.exe executable. Does this mean I have to go to step 4? Is this a correct thought?
Finally, I purchased recovery software a while back called Undelete Pro, version 5.5. This can recover partitions, folder, and files. I used this to recover my Windows folder, bootmgr, etc. and have them stored away safely. I haven't gotten around to comparing them with what is currently in the Windows folder.
PS: I can still boot into Puppy Linux off either CD or flashdrive
It looks like I'm not alone with Vista laptops not supplying recovery disk as on my Acer laptop.
Because mine came with on half gig of memory (criminal I know when running Vista) I explored other options prior to considering purchasing more memory.
First, someone gave me a Fedora 7 disk which I installed as a dual boot. This worked fine until I got the bright idea for speedy Linux OS and found Puppy Linux. I did not install to the HD or any partition, I simply booted from a CD first then a flash drive. Everything worked fine at this point!
The problems started when I re-partitioned the HD adding a partition to make room for any files I might need space for when I run Puppy. To do this I shrank the Fedora partition.
This was my fatal mistake. I shrunk the Fedora partition too small and lost my Grub splash screen apparently damaging the MBR. I was able to fix this in Puppy, or so I thought.
To make a long story shorter, when I select windows from my Grub screen it just sits there after the "Chainloader +1" line.
I tried the System Restore in the WIKI, but it returned could be found. This sounds like a lesson learned for Vista users, create your system restore points.
I tried running the "Automated Repair" (step 2 in the WIKI)from the "Windows Vista Recovery Disk Download" software and it failed, saying it fixed the problem but it hadn't.
That would take me to step 3, but without a disk I don't know where to retrieve the bootsect.exe executable. Does this mean I have to go to step 4? Is this a correct thought?
Finally, I purchased recovery software a while back called Undelete Pro, version 5.5. This can recover partitions, folder, and files. I used this to recover my Windows folder, bootmgr, etc. and have them stored away safely. I haven't gotten around to comparing them with what is currently in the Windows folder.
PS: I can still boot into Puppy Linux off either CD or flashdrive
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