Solved Weird boot problem after rescue CD boot fix

[tzeus]

Hello.
Just like the title says. I installed linux and grub, which kinda screwed up my windows boot. Long story short, i used rescue CD to do the fixboot => fixmbr => rebuild bcd.
After that i wanted to install linux again, but none of my flash drives are recongnized as being bootable. I tried a dozen times(for real) with 4 different distros, and 4 different writing utilities, but none of them worked. Windows bootable usb gets recognized in boot selection menu, the others don't. This happened only after using rescue CD(i just don't realise how that could have influenced things). I tested the flashdrives on my 2nd PC and they work, so we can be sure the drives are good.
I don't know what settings to change in bios anymore, i tried usb2 legacy enabled / disabled. I tried boot selection as USB hdd,Cd, zip fdd. Usually the usb drives should be recognized under the hdd section, they are not there either. What to do?
P.S. I posted in this section, but i don't know if i am right. Feel free to move the post. Also i posted in 7forums(i use win7) because i think it's a rescueCD generateb problem, i just don't understand it.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Well just a suggestion mate is do it from an optical disk I don't like booting from sticks personally.

Plus I prefer a bootable Ubuntu disk and just use the try version as I have had many problems in the past with dual boots

If you are trying to just reinstall the 7 clean see this again I use the disk variety

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2432-usb-windows-7-installation-key-drive-create.html

if you have to have data then of course this will not be of much use to you but it is worth keeping the DVD for future use

 

[tzeus]

I don't have a DVD/CD rom, i've never used one in years. Dual boots are not that complicated it's just that i don't understand the issue and it's driving me crazy! I use diskpart to create my windows USB's, so nothing new there.

 

[essenbe]

Linux has installed Grub into the boot manager of Windows. Grub is extremenly difficult to get rid of. Please read through this tutorial and see if there is any info that can help you. It is about 1 distro, but I believe it pertains to any distro of Linux. In the mean time, I will look for some other info to help. In case a clean install is necessary, do you need to copy your personal info out first?
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/257048-dual-boot-windows-7-linux.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/20864-mbr-restore-windows-7-master-boot-record.html

Also, can you boot into either OS? You should be able to get Windows to boot with the installation USB.

 

[gregrocker]

In addition reset your BIOS to defaults: Clear CMOS - 3 Ways to Clear the CMOS - Reset BIOS setting HDD first to boot.

Then try booting the flash stick again using the one-time BIOS boot menu key. Does the stick show up by name? If not format it again.

If this fails confirm the Win7 partition is Marked Active, boot the Win7 installer to run Startup Repair - Run up to 3 Separate Times. If necessary download the latest official ISO for your licensed version, burn to stick from Clean Reinstall tutorial in my signature photo below.

 

[tzeus]

I am ok with grub, i know my way around it. Grub is not the issue here. When i had grub, i couldn't load windows, i got BOOTMGR is missing. That was because i put C drive to load windows, when the bootmanager was installed on D(my system hdd failed a few months ago, so i had to resize another one of my partitions, i guess this caused this weird issue with bootmgr on D, and windows loader on C). This was my fault but i didn't see it until i installed easyBCD to see partition tables. I can boot into windows, that is not the issue. I loaded optimized / failsafe defaults in BIOS only to get to the same result. Only windows usb flashdrive works and gets recognized in the bios, the linux drives don't show up. The drives work on my 2nd pc, so thee is no need to reformat them.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

I'll leave you with these folks tzeus it is beyond me as I am not a fan of dual boots anyway

 

[tzeus]

I solved it but, i still don't understand what was happening to my pc. I used dd from linux.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

I solved it but, i still don't understand what was happening to my pc. I used dd from linux.

Would be nice to know what the solution was tzeus

 

[tzeus]

I wrote in the previous post. I used dd from Linux. It is a program that copies raw information from one place to another. So in my case the command was dd if= name_of image of=/dev/sdc. Where sdc is my thumb drive.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

I wrote in the previous post. I used dd from Linux. It is a program that copies raw information from one place to another. So in my case the command was dd if= name_of image of=/dev/sdc. Where sdc is my thumb drive.

Sorry mate had no idea what dd was or is?

 

[tzeus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)