Windows 7: Dual boot Win 7 / Ubuntu 12.04 borked.

I am a new member of this forum and a Windows user for the first time in ten years (Win2K). I have been running my Windows 7 install for two weeks on my home built, desktop box. When I originally installed Win 7, I erased my Linux system and let the Windows 7 installer choose which of my two internal drives to install on. The install went fine, but after two weeks I started missing Linux. Yesterday, I installed the latest version of Ubuntu. This formats the drive (in Linux /dev/sda - I don't know what that would be in Windows) and installs the Linux Grub 2 boot loader. However, Grub 2 is unable to find a Win 7 installation that it can add to the boot loader. I assume that either the Win 7 boot loader files were deleted or the "secret" partition was erased, or both. I have a post here that has been trying to address the problem mainly from the Linux side, but as can be seen, I also refer to what I have done to try to repair the Win 7 boot loader. The problem is that I have basically been asking Linux users to help me with a Win 7 problem.



Anyone out there that can help me sort this out, so that I can use both Linux and Windows?

Hi,

Download and use the free version of EasyBCD to add the Ubuntu entry so it chainloads from the Windows bootloader. Refer to this guide:

http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Ubuntu

Regards,
Golden

Thanks for the3 quick response. It looks like the author of that guide makes the assumption that the user can boot into Windows. I can't. Using chkdsk, I can see that the Windows system is fine. The only error was an allocation issue with the MBR.

what and how many partitions are on sda?
what and how many partitions are on sdb?
What is linux (sdb1, sdb2... or?)
and what is Windows 7?

Try this How to add Vista/Windows 7 partition to Grub 2 (Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala) « Eric's Notes
Does it change the grub2 bootmenu? Windows 7 boots?

/dev/sda is where Ubuntu 12.04 resides. The disk has a root partition at sda1, sda2 is an extended partition. sda5 is a swap partition. sda6 is a home partition. There is only one partition on sdb it is a primary NTFS partition at sdb1

I get the message "BOOTMGR missing". when I try to boot Win 7 from Grub

So sdb is for Windows 7 and has only 1 big partition. Is that an active partition?
sda is all linux stuff.

Post file /boot/grub/grub.cfg
/etc/grub.d/11_Windows as well

sdb (Win 7) is flagged as a "boot" partition in Gparted and sda (Ubuntu) is not.

The /boot/grub/grub.cfg file contents is located here.

I deleted /etc/grub.d/11_Windows because it wasn't working. I tried both the original posting and the version for two disks that is mentioned in the comments section. Even the menu entry came out looking weird. I know, the function is more important than the aesthetics, but as neither was working... I have also been looking at this posting, but I am having some difficulty wrapping my head around it.