CrunchBang Linux

mcarni

#! CrunchBanger

Registered: 2009-02-10

Posts: 132

[SOLVED] HELP - screwed up windows boot loader

Guys,

I just bought a new usb stick and I was planning to install crunchbang 9.04 so to have it also at work and not only at home.
I used a crunchbang 9.04 live cd (actually usb with unetbootin) and i booted my work laptop.
(...Don't ask me why I used my work laptop and not my personal one, I asked myself the same question probably one million time in the last half an hour...)

STUPIDLY i forgot about windows bootloader and the MBR, so I believe I screwed up and overwritten the windows loader.
When I try to boot windows it gives me a grub error 21...
I spent the last hour looking for a possible solution, unfortunately it seems most of them involve a windows CD, which I don't have here.
I saw people speaking of "fdisk /mbr", which is a command that should restore the old windows boot loader, but I am struggling to find a way to run it since I don't have a windows Cd available.
I downloaded freedos (fdbasecd.iso and fdfullcd.iso) and made a usb stick with unetbootin (I also have no blank CD and now shops are closed...) but in both case it said corrupted kernel image.

Any ideas/suggestion that would spare me the humiliation of begging the IT manager to rescue me (counting also that I am working thousand miles away from the headquarters will be highly highly appreciated.

thanks

M

Last edited by mcarni (2009-08-23 09:21:49)

kelean

#! CrunchBanger

Registered: 2009-01-21

Posts: 180

Re: [SOLVED] HELP - screwed up windows boot loader

Get super grub disk.  You will be able to restore you mbr to windows, here is a link.

http://www.supergrubdisk.org/

Hope that helps, Kelean.

mcarni

#! CrunchBanger

Registered: 2009-02-10

Posts: 132

Re: [SOLVED] HELP - screwed up windows boot loader

thanks Kelean,

I used Super Grub Disk, following Herman's page, it does say that it succeeded but now I get stuck in a Dell Hardware test.

I will try again, I will let you know how it goes (maybe tomorrow morning, it is getting lat here...)

Thank you very much for the suggestion

M

mcarni

#! CrunchBanger

Registered: 2009-02-10

Posts: 132

Re: [SOLVED] HELP - screwed up windows boot loader

Thanks,

Herman Grub page and Super Grub Disk did it again, it was not as simple as I imagined...but that-s how things go.
Just in case someone else eds up in a similar situation this i what I did:

- boot from my fresh Crunchbang usb stick an take a look at the partitions on my work laptop
- noticed that there were two, first one, small partition with Dell utilities, the second one with windows
- rebooted into SuperGrubDisk
- went to windows and tried boot second partition option
- it booted easily in Windows, so I guess the problem was that yesterday night I instructed MBR to boot fro the first partition and not the second

- rebooted again in SuperGrubDisk
- this time I chose windows -> advanced
- when asked what partition I edited the command (pressing "e") and replaced hd0, with hd0,1
- followed the instructions and selected the second partition

- rebooted for the last time in SuperGrubDisk
- I chose windows -> advanced and activate partitions
- i selected the second partition to activate hd0,1

I am not sure both last two steps were necessary, but i wanted to be sure

I then removed the SuperGrubDisk usb stick, rebooted and everything was back to normal (so I shut it down and got back to my crunchbang linux laptop)

THANKS

M