MBR not found when booting Windows 7 (Dual-boot with linux)

I have 3 hard drives on my tower: one 250 gb for data, one with 500 gb for Windows 7(64) and lastly I have one with 80 gb for Windows XP(32). I had installed XP before I installed 7. After installing 7, whenever I powered the machine, it would allow me to choose between "Windows 7" or "an older version of windows" (XP). Perhaps I was not careful nor did I do enough research when I installed 7, but I assumed the hdd with XP would keep its MBR with only one option and a new MBR would be installed on the 500gb hdd allowing me to choose between both.

Now taking this in consideration, and as I had stopped using XP completely, I thought it would be harmless to format the 80gb hdd. I wanted to install Linux. So I installed Ubuntu (10.04) 64bit on the 80gb, assuming that grub2 would be installed there with an entry for Windows 7 (the MBR installed on the 500gb hdd). Things did not go as I'd expect. Not only did grub2 not display any Windows 7 entry, whenever I set the 500gb as first boot hdd, I get an error saying no MBR was found.

Believing that for some reason the MBR in the 500 gb was damaged (or maybe it never existed, perhaps what really happened was that the 80gb XP MBR was edited during 7 install), I inserted the Windows 7 64 bit dvd, accessed repair, dos and ran repair commands I found on the web (not blindly of course). More specifically, "bootsect /nt60 D:" ( MBR - Restore Windows 7 Master Boot Record ), where D: was the label shown for the 500gb hdd when I ran "list volume" in diskpart.

Unfortunately, this did not help, as the same error is still being presented. The data is there though, and in Ubuntu I can access it and I can even detect the existence of Windows 7 install using a script in the terminal there. Appreciate any insight.

Try this:

Startup Repair
Note: You may need to do startup repair 3 to 4 times.

Use EasyBCD 2.0 in Win 7 & Win XP.
EasyBCD 2.0 Beta Builds - The NeoSmart Forums

Thanks for the welcome :).

theog said:

Try this:

Startup Repair
Note: You may need to do startup repair 3 to 4 times.

Use EasyBCD 2.0 in Win 7 & Win XP.
EasyBCD 2.0 Beta Builds - The NeoSmart Forums

Do you mean those two methods as alternative? So I shall only try EasyBCD if the repair tool fails?

Bare Foot Kid said:

Hello sord, welcome to Seven Forums.



Have a look in disk management to see if W 7 is "Active, System" and if it is not right click the partition with W 7 on it and mark it "Active" then use the info in this tutorial at the link below to run a startup repair it may take as many as three 3 separate repairs with re-boots between them to re-write the boot files back to the Windows partition.
Be sure to post back to keep us informed.


How to Run a Startup Repair in Windows 7

"Have a look in disk management" - Do you mean somewhere inside Ubuntu? i'm running the repairs mentioned in that tutorial at the moment, finished the first one and it said it found problems that could not be fixed (irrelevant info, errors with "unknown" as signatures, did not submit to MS).

Will post feedback, thanks for the quick replies.

EDIT: second attempt also failed, this time I opened the Diagnosis and repair details and it reported that the system disk is \Device\Harddisk0. Is this correct? At the moment, in the bios settings, the 500 gb hard drive is not the first (third actually, detected as sdc in Ubuntu).

When you have Windows 7 booting, you can sort out the dual boot with EasyBCD.

How to use EasyBCD:
Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

Bare Foot Kid said:

Use this to boot and mark Windows as "Active" and run the repairs, look at Option Three, Step Two; that should work.


Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

Will do so. I believe I can set it to "Active" (exclusively "Active" I assume) in Ubuntu, will do so after this one is done. If it fails, I'll try Partition Wizard.

If that fails, I'll attempt EasyBCD that theog mentioned meanwhile.

NOTE:
EDIT: second attempt also failed, this time I opened the Diagnosis and repair details and it reported that the system disk is \Device\Harddisk0. Is this correct? At the moment, in the bios settings, the 500 gb hard drive is not the first (third actually, detected as sdc in Ubuntu).

All right I ran Partition Wizard, followed Option3Step2, the hdd was already set as Primary, so only set it as active. Startup Repair is still not being able to fix it. I feel it is necessary to mention again, the repair tool is reporting disk0 in the details of the failed repair. My hdd with 7 is not set as first hdd to boot in hdd boot priority in the bios, don't know if that has anything to do with it. Going to attempt theog's solution now.

Did 3 repairs with reboots between them. The error code was always 0x1f: "System volume on disk is corrupt.". System Disk = \Device\Harddisk0 and the first hard drive in the bios hard drive priority list is the 500 GB one with 7. No luck so far.

Going to read into theog's suggestion now. Thanks for the help so far.

By the way, are the forums under DDoS or something?