Windows 7 Bootup Issue / GRUB interference

[Heinrich]

About 2 years ago I played around with GRUB dual-booting Ubuntu. I found Linux not much use to me, but it was fun for awhile.

It's been so long I'm not sure how I got back to a normal Vista bootup, but I pretty much forgot about GRUB and Linux. Until my Western Digital main C: Raptor hard drive failed last week.

I can restore the Windows 7 system to both C: (WD) and D: (Samsung) drives from WHS and get a successful restore.

When I reboot, the BIOS only recognizes D: as a bootable drive on my BOOT listing, the Samsung. If I press F9 for a manual boot disk, I select the Western Digital, I will go straight into Windows 7 no problems.

However, if I forget, or slip up, or in the course of testing , attempting to boot into the Western Digital (Windows 7) hands-off, if the default Samsung drive loads, it tries to boot GRUB, and fails. At that point, the MBR is corrupt and I will no longer be able to boot into Windows 7. E_V_E_R until I do a 2.5 hour restore again.

When I boot into Windows 7 recover console, it switches the drive letters. It makes the WD the D: drive and the Samsung the C: drive. I've tried every combination of /bootcfg, /bcdedit and automated Windows 7 CD repair I can think of. I cannot get this GRUB thing go away.

I have also taken the drives and put them into another PC and reformatted / reset them. I think that GRUB must be part of the WHS backup that i am restoring.

 

[Nothinman]

If it works just fine when you select the right drive then it should just be a matter of fixing the order from which your BIOS tries to boot.

 

[Heinrich]

If it works just fine when you select the right drive then it should just be a matter of fixing the order from which your BIOS tries to boot.

It SHOULD be, I agree. Perhaps I have a BIOS bug. The WD is not listed in the BIOS screen, only the Samsung. I have to hit F9 for a popup window to appear then I can select the WD.

 

[MrColin]

You could try disconnecting the western digital and boot from a windows install cd and run fixmbr? That should wipe out grub AFAIK.

 

[Heinrich]

yes, I've done that, and Grub still remains.

What I discovered is that this BioStar Tpower NF590 wants the bootable drive to be Drive 1 in the SATA chain, then I can boot off it. And, I also have "Bootable Sector write prevention" turned on in security so that GRUB still stops trying to write the MBR in case the Samsung boots.

But, GRUB still remains , corrupted, on the Samsung. I just played with it again. Fortunately the the BIOS MBR write-prevention let me boot with the WD fine.

 

[EricMartello]

Firstly on a dual boot system with windows + something I'd probably stick using windows boot selector and not grub. I've always had better luck with that.

In your case you don't need to reformat or restore to fix the MBR. You just need to boot with your Windows 7 CD and start the recovery console, which is a command-prompt interface that has several useful commands...one of them is "bootsect" which you can use to reset the MBR to windows default.

For example, after starting recovery console, you would type:

bootsect /nt60 sys

The above command will attempt to fix the MBR of the boot drive that you originally set windows up on...but since you used grub it may not work as expected, so you can try this one:

bootsect /nt60 c:\

Replacing c:\ with the actual drive that you installed windows on...that should do the trick.

 

[Nothinman]

Firstly on a dual boot system with windows + something I'd probably stick using windows boot selector and not grub. I've always had better luck with that.

I'd say you're in the minority then, the Windows boot loader is terrible.

 

[EricMartello]

I'd say you're in the minority then, the Windows boot loader is terrible.

Terrible...no, it's functional. It does what it's supposed to do. What else do you want? A hand job each time you boot?

 

[Heinrich]

so with the commands above, which drive letter do I use, the drive letter that I see when I am running WINDOWS or the drive lettter that I see on the recovery cd?

The WD is drive C: when running Windows but drive D: when running the recovery cd

ps: Is this normal? I don't ever remember seeing this before this particular install.

 

[EricMartello]

Try this one then:

bootsect /nt60 sys

If you specify your drive, you will need to specify the windows boot drive so if that is D : in your case then you would specify D.

 

[Nothinman]

Terrible...no, it's functional. It does what it's supposed to do. What else do you want? A hand job each time you boot?

It's functional in the same way that a flathead screwdriver can be used to screw in phillips screws, sure it can work but its not the right tool for that job.

 

[EricMartello]

It's functional in the same way that a flathead screwdriver can be used to screw in phillips screws, sure it can work but its not the right tool for that job.

If the OP did it the way I suggested and used the Windows bootloader then this thread would not exist right now.