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Repair bootloader adventure - blinking cursor of death edition
Yesterday, I made the biggest mistake of my life, I installed Linux next to windows 7 (same hdd). Linux didn't like my computer so I decided to remove it. After some arguments with bootloader (I skip the details) merciful Grub (some GNU bootloader that replaced native windows bootloader during installation) allowed me to boot to windows. The first thing I did after booting is I removed the partition (4 partitions actually) with Linux and I expanded windows partition to fill the empty leftover space. I thought that Grub was somewhere over there and this will restore old windows bootloader. How wrong I was. Grub was still there so I launched console from windows repair CD and I typed bootrec /fixmbr and then bootrec /fixboot. Grub was gone. However, it was replaced by blinking cursor of death (blinking underscore character that stays there forever). Since then I was unable to boot to windows. This is what I've already tried:
*startup repair from windows repair dics (it could not detect a problem)
*bootrec /fixmbr, bootrec /fixboot
*bootrec /rebuildbcd (it didnt do anything)
*delete bcd and then bootrec /rebuildbcd (it actually detected windows installation)
*recovery disk offered fixing boot error and I clicked "fix and reboot"
*mark partition as active with diskpart (I wonder how can I check if it became active ?)
*bootsect /nt60 c: /mbr
*bootsect /nt60 all
(For last 2 commands:
it said "update may be unreliable since the volume could not be locked during the update: access denied" and later "successfully updated disk bootcode".)
*install Grub back, it won't install on ntfs partition
*chckdsk /F and then fixboot and fixmbr (it repaired something)
There was absolutely no change after every method I tried.
What I can do:
*launch console from windows repair disc
*boot live Linux from my usb
It appears to be a bootloader problem or my computer has no idea where to find it. I didn't accidently delete all partitions. I can normally access hdd from windows repair console or Linux live + windows repair disc detects windows installation.
Possible solution: install alternative bootloader. There are many bootloaders out there but I don't know which one to choose and how to install it.
UPDATE:
For some reason bootrec /scanos finds 0 windows installations
UPDATE2:
I've just found out (when I launched Linux from live usb) that there were 2 boot folders in c:
"Boot" and "boot". I deleted "boot" (Linux leftover, other one has BCD file inside) but still no luck.
UPDATE3:
I tried:
sudo apt-get install lilo
sudo lilo -M /dev/sda mbr
In my Linux live, nothing.
UPDATE4:
I tried boot-repair (Linux live):
they said, It's repaired and displayed this website:
Paste2.org - Viewing Paste _Jt80sAKa it's info about my partitions, mbr, bootsector etc.
The blinking cursor was laughing at me and showed my middle finger after this
UPDATE5:
Nuclear holocaust method from here https://neosmart.net/wiki/recovering...ws-bootloader/ didn't work. How is that even possible ?
Solution:
Kind of overkill but I didn't want to waste any more time on this. Using gparted (linux live) I shrinked windows partition and I installed Linux back. Grub came back and he is my best buddy now. He let me boot to windows.
Last edited by szpaq234; 27 Feb 2015 at 22:45. Reason: update