I can see that as a solution now that you mention it. Unfortunately, I have been reading Ubuntu threads and am already in the current situation. If I installed Win 7 on an AMD 64-bit laptop that I have, could I copy the /bootmgr and /bcd folders over to my desktop box and get this booting issue sorted out?
sdb1 boot sector looks fine.
sdba and sdb boot have word GRUB in MBR. Form which physical disk do you boot? And which disk has an active partition?
You must mark Win7 or it's 100mb System Reserved partition Active before running Startup Repair x3. Mark Partition Active
Thanks for the replies, I didn't expect you guys to be online so late. OK, here is the situation. At this time, I boot from sda into Ubuntu. As both drives are the same brand, model and size, I am not sure which drive is considered to be first by the UEFI BIOS. This can be tested by unplugging one drive and the other of course. The original reason I erased both of my drives completely before installing Win 7 and Ubuntu was to see which drive Win 7 preferred. I am not sure why Win 7 installed on disk "1" (sdb).
I have run diskpart and made sure that partition "1" on disk "1" is marked as active. However, I was not sure that marking the active partition lasted from session to session, so when I went in the second time to run startup recover, I ran diskpart again to make sure that the correct partition was marked as active. Now when I run startup recover, I get a message that repairs can not take place automatically, plus a dialog for sending a message to Microsoft. The detailed view only reveals a bunch of zeros in the different categories. Nothing is specified.
You can avoid all of this mess by unplugging one HD to install Win7, then unplugging the other HD to install Ubuntu. Boot preferred by setting it first to boot in BIOS setup; boot the other tapping one-time BIOS Boot Menu key at boot.
If one of them will boot on its own now then you don't need to reinstall it, just unplug it while installing the other.
OK, I did as you suggested and things seem to be working fine so far. Unfortunately, there is a side effect I wasn't aware of. Programs that were installed were not uninstalled and therefore company databases think that I am trying to install program copies on more than one computer. My licenses don't work. How do I can I get that sorted out?
asking the program's customer support, probably. They should be able to remove the old entry in their database and free the licence again.
At least it worked with a few games I had when I had to reformat everything.
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