Vista partition drive letter gone and recovery does not find anything

Trying to use MBRtool I get "Error copying MBRtool.exe". The plot thickens. One thing is sure and that's something is not right. :smile:
 
Yes. Sorry for not being clear. Yes it was when I boot into Ubuntu. Which now resides on sda1. The only way I managed to get EasyBCD going was to mix build 53 and 59. Taking BootGrabber from 53 and copying over 59. Perhaps that was a dumb thing to do?

Addendum:

I get the error when trying to extract MBRtool from archive and save to root of. Oh now I see. It does not say what I thought. Ok. Never mind about this MBRtool :smile:

But I still want to get EasyBCD to manage my Ubuntu partition.
 
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zmalex said:
Yes. Sorry for not being clear. Yes it was when I boot into Ubuntu. Which now resides on sda1.
Click to expand...
Ubuntu is now on sda1? :S How did you manage that? And if that's the case, then what are you trying to edit the MBR partition table for, anyway? :brows:
The only way I managed to get EasyBCD going was to mix build 53 and 59. Taking BootGrabber from 53 and copying over 59. Perhaps that was a dumb thing to do?
Click to expand...
Not sure if that works or not. :wink: I'm guessing the versions of the BootGrabber varies between versions of EasyBCD (no doubt the code is considerably different), so you need to use the one that came with 59, not 53, if you're using Beta 59 of EasyBCD.

I get the error when trying to extract MBRtool from archive and save to root of. Oh now I see. It does not say what I thought. Ok. Never mind about this MBRtool :smile:

But I still want to get EasyBCD to manage my Ubuntu partition.
Click to expand...

Have you tried adding a new entry again under the Linux tab, making sure to select the box called "Grub isn't installed to the MBR/bootsector"?

-Coolname007
 
Well you know the story.

Vista disc manager screwed up things by adding a 1mb partition to sda1. I have been trying to get EISA back to sda1 and vista to sda2. Then I gave up and reinstalled Ubuntu to sda1 instead and the swap to sda3.

It's when I try to add a new linux entry in EasyBCD that I get the BootGrabber.exe pop-up error I mentioned previously. If you look up a few posts I have done a BootGrabber.exe /list and pasted the output. It seems that it exits after trying to list my EISA partition.
 
zmalex said:
Well you know the story.

Vista disc manager screwed up things by adding a 1mb partition to sda1. I have been trying to get EISA back to sda1 and vista to sda2. Then I gave up and reinstalled Ubuntu to sda1 instead and the swap to sda3.
Click to expand...
By the following quote, it sounded like you had managed to move them, and had gotten rid of the 1 MB partition...:wtf:
zmalex said:
I have already moved my two other partitions so that there no longer is a 1mb space.
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^_^
It's when I try to add a new linux entry in EasyBCD that I get the BootGrabber.exe pop-up error I mentioned previously. If you look up a few posts I have done a BootGrabber.exe /list and pasted the output. It seems that it exits after trying to list my EISA partition.
Click to expand...
Hmm...yes, that error is odd, and might have something to do with a screwed-up partition table. :wink: I'm hoping Guru will post in this thread soon, and have an answer for this problem.
Another thing...you haven't even clarified yet whether Grub is still installed to the MBR, or if you replaced it with Vista's loader. :smile:

-Coolname007
 
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Yeah sorry. Grub should be installed on the Ubuntu partition and i am using Vista boot loader. Let me know if you need me to run any tools to gather info.
 
zmalex said:
Yeah sorry. Grub should be installed on the Ubuntu partition and i am using Vista boot loader. Let me know if you need me to run any tools to gather info.
Click to expand...

Well, running the following commands in EasyBCD's Power Console in the "Useful Utilites" section, and then posting their output, might help us figure out where the problem lies:

Code: 
MBRfix /drive 0 listpartitions
bootpart
-Coolname007
 
Voila

C:\Program Files (x86)\NeoSmart Technologies\EasyBCD\bin>MbrFix /drive 0 listpartitions

# Boot Size (MB) Type
1 19077 131 Linux native (usually ext2fs)
2 Yes 12338 39 Unknown
3 252906 7 NTFS or HPFS
4 20920 5 DOS 3.3+ Extended Partition

Addendum:

C:\Program Files (x86)\NeoSmart Technologies\EasyBCD\bin>bootpart
Boot Partition 2.60 for WinNT/2K/XP (c)1995-2005 G. Vollant (info@winimage.com)
WEB : Gilles Vollant software and BootPart
Add partition in the Windows NT/2000/XP Multi-boot loader
Run "bootpart /?" for more information

Physical number of disk 0 : 2c14f1e4
0 : C: type=83 (Linux native), size= 19535040 KB, Lba Pos=543221910
1 : C:* type=27 , size= 12635091 KB, Lba Pos=63
2 : C: type=7 (HPFS/NTFS), size= 258975832 KB, Lba Pos=25270245
3 : C: type=5 (Extended), size= 21422677 KB, Lba Pos=582291990
4 : C: type=82 (Linux swap), size= 21422646 KB, Lba Pos=582292053

Addendum:

I'm off to bed now but i'll check in tomorrow again.
 
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Ok, so your partitions are like this now:

sda1= Ubuntu root partition
sda2=EISA partition (which contains your Vista boot files) and is your "system" and "active" partition
sda3=Vista partition
sda4=Extended partition (where did that come from?? :wtf:smile:
sda5=logical swap partition (within the extended)
Click to expand...
as opposed to your original setup, which according to the info you posted in the other thread, was like this:

sda1=EISA partition (which contains your Vista boot files)
sda2=Vista partition
sda3=Primary swap partition
sda4=Ubuntu root partition
Click to expand...
So based on the info, Disk Management somehow created that 1 MB partition at sda1, and bumped the other partitions down in the partition table, and after you later deleted it (or resized it to fit your Ubuntu partition), you installed Ubuntu on sda1, which is how it is now. Also, you apparently deleted your original primary swap partition, and created an extended partition, and a swap within that extended.
Ok, so just wanted to verify that that was the case...:wink:
Now we need to wait for Guru to post in this thread, and tell us what the issue is with BootGrabber going haywire again (even with Build 59 of EasyBCD). :smile:

-Coolname007
 
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The reason for the extended partition is that I want to install OS x later on a primary partition and I can only have so many primary partitions.

One thing I have learned by this is that Vista disc manager is the utter piece of **** software. It transformed my once so pretty dual boot world to dust by doing operations I never asked for.
 
zmalex said:
The reason for the extended partition is that I want to install OS x later on a primary partition and I can only have so many primary partitions.

One thing I have learned by this is that Vista disc manager is the utter piece of **** software. It transformed my once so pretty dual boot world to dust by doing operations I never asked for.
Click to expand...

Agree with you completely on that...:wink: The whole Vista OS can be a royal pain in the *** sometimes, and it certainly is a lot of the time, in my case. :frowning: For one thing, it always takes forever to do simple tasks like startup, and shutdown...and practically everytime a program crashes or freezes (which is often, I might add...) it tends to lock up my whole system, and make me have to do an improper shutdown (not good, I know, but I have no choice...). :glare: And I've already pretty much stopped as many startup programs as I could, so there's not much more I can do there, but Vista still sucks...
I'm hoping to do some maintenance work on it soon though, and try to get it up to speed, and cut down on the amount of processes that are run at a time, which will hopefully make it slightly more faster...*doubtful*

Anyhow, I'm sure Guru will post one of these days in this thread, and tell us all what the problem is with BootGrabber that you're experiencing still with Build 59. No doubt he is pretty busy right now though, doing other things like working on the next build of EasyBCD in which hopefully a lot of these problems will be fixed with no more worries...:wink: Things like this require a lot of patience to work through.

Cheers.

-Coolname007
 
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Unfortunately, I can't tell anyone what the problem with Build 59 is if I cannot reproduce it on my end.

zmalex, I'm probably going to need you to test a couple of debug builds and see if we can't come up with something.
 
I'd be more than glad to. If we look back build 59 fixed my problems the first time. Now it seems BootGrabber hangs when trying to list my EISA partition.

It lists the Ubuntu partition just fine and then boom.
 
So while waiting for a respone I started playing arround with installing mac osx. After installation I tried EasyBCD on my linux partition and what do you know. It now works. It even starts to boot mac osx. (however it does not work but that is for another thread)
 
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