Need help starting Windows 7 on boot up.

gregrocker said:

I hope you made the Recovery Disks before installing Ubuntu as often times the Recovery partition is disabled by a clean install.
No, I failed in doing this. "Stupid is as stupid does."
See if you can make the disks now, or try runnng Recovery by tapping the key given at bootup for Recovery, or check manual for your model.
I'll check this out. Thanks for the suggestion.
The problem is that even if you can get Recovery to run the HD may need deep cleaning (by applying zeros using Diskpart or a Partition Manager like free Partition Wizard to wipe disk) to get rid of GRUB.
I have Partition Magic. I can try using it.
Your tech support will often send Recover Disk set for price of shipping, and may even send a clean copy DVD of Win7. The other option is to borrow or find a Win7 installer to install your version with key stickered to computer. This is actually the cleanest possible install as it eliminates the factory bloatware which is corrupting in itself.
Great suggestion.
With the DVD or Recov disks, then you can Wipe the HD with Partition Wizard CD first, or boot DVD Command Line (press Shift F10 at bootup) to run DISKPART Clean All command before installing Win7. I can only do this if I have a Windows 7 Recovery disk.

Thanks

Partition Magic has mixed results on Win7. Suggest you use free Partition Wizard bootable CD which has never failed in hundreds of operations we've helped with here.

You can run DISKPART to zero the HD from either the Win7 install DVD, Repair CD or the Vista Install or Repair CD. Or better yet, use Partition Wizard CD to Wipe HD.

what is the problem with doing a mbr restore from the win 7 disk?

gregrocker said:

Partition Magic has mixed results on Win7. Suggest you use free Partition Wizard bootable CD which has never failed in hundreds of operations we've helped with here.

You can run DISKPART to zero the HD from either the Win7 install DVD, Repair CD or the Vista Install or Repair CD. Or better yet, use Partition Wizard CD to Wipe HD.

Ok about Partition Magic.

What do you mean by "zero the HD"? I don't know if this matters, but I do not have a Windows Install or restore "disk."

Are there instructions to follow so I don't make things worse?

Pusspa said:

what is the problem with doing a mbr restore from the win 7 disk?

Thank you for asking. I do not have any installation disks. Windows 7 came installed on the computer.

Here is a recovery link this is not a install disc it just gets you to the repair area. Also if your going run Ubuntu I would pick a newer version since I believe 7.10 is getting close to it's non support time, Try Lucid. Personally I don't like wubi but every body has there own preferences. Download Windows 7 System Recovery Discs — The NeoSmart Files There are tutorial threads on here by brink and others which have good instructions to reinstalling the W7 boot loader. Grub will disappear with a correct reload. You don't have to run a exotic cleaner to get rid of it.

kittyhawk63 said:

wee said:

Here is a recovery link this is not a install disc it just gets you to the repair area. Also if your going run Ubuntu I would pick a newer version since I believe 7.10 is getting close to it's non support time, Try Lucid. Personally I don't like wubi but every body has there own preferences. Download Windows 7 System Recovery Discs — The NeoSmart Files There are tutorial threads on here by brink and others which have good instructions to reinstalling the W7 boot loader. Grub will disappear with a correct reload. You don't have to run a exotic cleaner to get rid of it.

I may have tried this earlier this afternoon. I will check out the link again. Maybe I missed something. I think I didn't know what to do with the recovery disk once I booted to it and was afraid I may mess up my Windows 7.

Can Linux be installed to a partition "inside" Windows 7?

Remember, I do not have Windows 7 installation disks. It was already installed with the new computer. I dislike it when a new machine does not come with recovery disks.

I agree about the old Linux. Just had it laying around.

It's late here. If you have any suggestions, I will check them tomorrow. Thanks for all the hlep so far. Good nite!

I think the advice to have the backup discs burned 1st is a good way to start as well as getting a oem version of W7 or whatever is appropriate, I am a open source user so the people on this site will be more helpful with backups and generally all things MS. Since I started with open source I am not a backer upper I just have the install discs, and everything I don't want to lose on a external hard drive. So if any thing goes wrong all I have to do is insert a disc and install.

All my computer are upgrades=w7 or fresh installs of whatever I want to try out. As far as running Ubuntu inside of W7 I am not really familiar with doing this, I just set up multiple partition depending on what I want alongside/outside of W7. I tried wubi a while back just out of curiosity but it has limitations, 1st of which it is inside a OS that can be accessed by nastyware if not set up correctly, and the user understanding how to be basically protected. I think a MS OS can be run quite safely but it takes some tweaking to get it really safe. A open source OS can be cracked but it needs a root access to do it and there are no malware or virus's in the wild, basically probably because of the small amount of people who use it by comparison to MS.

What you might do is use a live Ubuntu CD open gparted in system-administaration-gparted and you will see exactly where your at as far as operating systems on the Hard drive. Take a screen shot of it and post it. Here is a boot script that is quite helpful, and all you MS users might want to check this out because it will give you the complete lowdown on the OS on your computer, doesn't work with raid setups though. You might consider posting this as well. SourceForge.net: Boot Info Script - Project Web Hosting - Open Source Software

You need a open source live CD to run this script but it is a good one. I have a midterm tomorrow from 12-2 pm pacific time so I wont be back until about 5 pm pacific tomorrow. There are others on the forum who are quite familiar with Ubuntu and other OS so I think your in the right place, also you might want the Ubuntu Forums in your bookmarks, like this site there are a lot of users, many dual booting, and the help there is very good. Ubuntu Forums

wee said:

kittyhawk63 said:

wee said:

Here is a recovery link this is not a install disc it just gets you to the repair area. Also if your going run Ubuntu I would pick a newer version since I believe 7.10 is getting close to it's non support time, Try Lucid. Personally I don't like wubi but every body has there own preferences. Download Windows 7 System Recovery Discs — The NeoSmart Files There are tutorial threads on here by brink and others which have good instructions to reinstalling the W7 boot loader. Grub will disappear with a correct reload. You don't have to run a exotic cleaner to get rid of it.

I may have tried this earlier this afternoon. I will check out the link again. Maybe I missed something. I think I didn't know what to do with the recovery disk once I booted to it and was afraid I may mess up my Windows 7.

Can Linux be installed to a partition "inside" Windows 7?

Remember, I do not have Windows 7 installation disks. It was already installed with the new computer. I dislike it when a new machine does not come with recovery disks.

I agree about the old Linux. Just had it laying around.

It's late here. If you have any suggestions, I will check them tomorrow. Thanks for all the help so far. Good nite!

I think the advice to have the backup discs burned 1st is a good way to start as well as getting a oem version of W7 or whatever is appropriate, I am a open source user so the people on this site will be more helpful with backups and generally all things MS. Since I started with open source I am not a backer upper I just have the install discs, and everything I don't want to lose on a external hard drive. So if any thing goes wrong all I have to do is insert a disc and install.

All my computer are upgrades=w7 or fresh installs of whatever I want to try out. As far as running Ubuntu inside of W7 I am not really familiar with doing this, I just set up multiple partition depending on what I want alongside/outside of W7. I tried wubi a while back just out of curiosity but it has limitations, 1st of which it is inside a OS that can be accessed by nastyware if not set up correctly, and the user understanding how to be basically protected. I think a MS OS can be run quite safely but it takes some tweaking to get it really safe. A open source OS can be cracked but it needs a root access to do it and there are no malware or virus's in the wild, basically probably because of the small amount of people who use it by comparison to MS.

What you might do is use a live Ubuntu CD open gparted in system-administaration-gparted and you will see exactly where your at as far as operating systems on the Hard drive. Take a screen shot of it and post it. Here is a boot script that is quite helpful, and all you MS users might want to check this out because it will give you the complete lowdown on the OS on your computer, doesn't work with raid setups though. You might consider posting this as well. SourceForge.net: Boot Info Script - Project Web Hosting - Open Source Software

You need a open source live CD to run this script but it is a good one. I have a midterm tomorrow from 12-2 pm pacific time so I wont be back until about 5 pm pacific tomorrow. There are others on the forum who are quite familiar with Ubuntu and other OS so I think your in the right place, also you might want the Ubuntu Forums in your bookmarks, like this site there are a lot of users, many dual booting, and the help there is very good. Ubuntu Forums

WEE, thank you for your suggestions. I will give them a try. I hope you do well on your midterm. Having earned four degrees, I know about midterms.

Can you boot into Win7 to post up a screenshot of your full Disk Management drive map? Use Snipping Tool in Start Menu, attach file using paper clip in Reply box.

Tell us what is currently on each drive, and what you would like it to look like after accomplishing what you want to do.

If you cannot boot Win7, then you need to download the Win7 Repair CD ISO file from the link given by Wee in #16, burn to CD, boot to do a repair. If the repair doesn't work, then we can help you mark Win7 active to recover the MBR into it using the CD Startup Repair run up to 3 separate times with reboots.

If there is another partition marked Active, it may block Startup Repair from recovering the MBR into Win7, so have a look and post up your Disk Management map, or look at the drive listings using free Partition Wizard bootable CD if you cannot boot Win7, mark Win7 active, Apply steps, then boot back into Repair CD to run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times with reboots to write the MBR to Win7 and start it up. Only GRUB corruption can block this.