Member Avatar for jmoran19

Hi, hopefully someone can help me with this, since there seems to be dozens of threads similar to my situation yet unintelligible to me.

So I recently did a fresh install of Windows 7 Professional x64, and in the process decided I would install Ubuntu to dual boot on the computer. The machine uses two 250GB drives in a RAID 0 configuration, so during the Windows 7 install I gave it a 400 GB partition, leaving about 70 GB free space to install Ubuntu. Got Windows up and running, no problems, had all my data back in place and was ready to tackle Ubuntu.

I didn't have any major issues on the Ubuntu installation, either. I picked the free partition for the OS and proceeded to install. I was up and running soon after, and assumed everything was a-o-k.

However, when I rebooted I noticed that the boot manager was different that what I'd seen when dual booting two Microsoft OS'es, which worried me. (I now understand that this is GRUB) Far more frightening was when I selected the W7 OS from the list, only to have the computer crash in the middle of booting up. During the loading MS logo, I catch a brief glimpse of a BSOD, followed by my monitor going to sleep and my computer's fan continuing to run but otherwise remaining inert. Safe Mode does the same thing, crashing without a visible error on boot and with a brief flash of BSOD.

Startup Repair was no help, since this was a new installation, and I stupidly assumed that I always had the out of reformatting and doing it all again, I didn't make any kind of system backup disk. If I choose automatic repair, it simply fails, with the details making it look like the process was a complete non starter. Finally, the program itself tells me that it can't find any hard drive in my computer.

The invisible hard drive has also prevented me from reinstalling Vista (I have a W7 upgrade disk, Vista full version) from scratch, as well as from using the repair feature on my W7 upgrade disk. To remedy this, I tried pointing to the original manufacturer's driver disk for hard drive drivers (it says it cannot find signed drivers) and I tried downloading the SATA drivers directly from the same website and pointing to that .exe (same error, says they are not valid signed drivers).

At this point, I'd love to find out I need to modify GRUB in some way, as I've seen suggested in one thread found via google. I know the data is all there, I can see it from the working-fine Ubuntu install. On the flip side, I'm not opposed to doing a complete reformat and fresh install of W7, which is my priority OS since this is a gaming computer for the most part and I just want to learn Linux for fun. However, without knowing how to make Windows Installer detect my hdd, I don't even know how to do that.

If anyone has any advice, I'm incredibly desperate. Step by step instructions would be best, to be safe, but at this point I'll take anything I can get. Please offer any suggestion and I'll reply with requested info asap.

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Member Avatar for mjdodd

certainly it sounds to me as though the boot sector on the hard disk is failing via grub. Windows uses its own boot called MBR (master boot record). and MBR wont really boot anything other than windows! Hence the windows repair will only put back the MBR and only give you windows. Grub (but ,I think you need to reinstall as above) is good for multiple booting but there are other booting software and it may be worth looking at some of these as they are designed to do multiple OS booting.
Cetrainly use something like partion manager to check that the primary partition is actually bootable.

M

Member Avatar for katokato

if you want you can reinstall grub2.

however, if youre seeing the windows screen that means that grub already handed the control to windows7's partition so i dont think its a grub problem? i could be wrong.

Member Avatar for Unifex

I have a problem where windows XP fails with the external USB drives connected but only when GRUB is in the loop, restore the XP MBR and the problem goes away. I would guess GRUB is leaving the USB in an unexpected state which causes XP to BSOD.

Maybe the same issue. I am going to try using boot.ini to launch GRUB to avoid the issue.

Member Avatar for JPWhite

Grub boot loader issues can be tricky.

Here is how I fixed my issues with Grub2

<snip>

Edited by crunchie because: snipped url.
Member Avatar for crunchie

Grub boot loader issues can be tricky.

Here is how I fixed my issues with Grub2

<snip>

If you want to help, post the answer here instead of pointing them to your blog.

Member Avatar for pajojeff

hank you for your post. I hadn’t considered that perspective before.

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