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[SOLVED] Issue Dual Booting Kubuntu and Windows 7

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    #1

    [SOLVED] Issue Dual Booting Kubuntu and Windows 7

    I have a (fairly new) factory installation of Windows 7 on my Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop. I used the disk partition to set aside around 14.5GB to install Kubuntu 10.04 from CD. The installation worked fine, and in fact, I am on Kubuntu currently.

    However, after I boot into Windows 7 and restart the computer, I get a "No Operating System Found" error in addition to some error about a Broadcom controller. After I got this error at first, I tried to boot from LiveCD, but this was not successful and eventually the screen just went white. I then reinstalled Kubuntu, and that worked; however, after booting into Windows 7 again and restarting, the error returns. It is as if Windows 7 is overwriting something essential in the boot process, but I do not know what.

    I cannot run Windows 7 on this machine without having to reinstall Kubuntu all over again. Any idea how I can fix this issue?
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    #2
    Re: Issue Dual Booting Kubuntu and Windows 7

    Found on
    https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2

    Code:
    $ sudo apt-get install --reinstall libdebian-installer4
$ sudo os-prober
$ sudo update-grub
    any help?
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      #3
      Re: Issue Dual Booting Kubuntu and Windows 7

      That hasn't worked so far. I just tried it and then loaded Windows 7 and restarted and got the same problem. However, I think I see what at least part of the issue is:

      Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
      /dev/sda1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility
      /dev/sda2 * 6 1918 15360000 7 HPFS/NTFS
      /dev/sda3 1918 13667 94377077+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
      /dev/sda4 13667 15567 15256577 5 Extended
      /dev/sda5 13667 15481 14568448 83 Linux
      /dev/sda6 15481 15567 687104 82 Linux swap / Solaris

      I think Windows 7 is overwriting the boot loader, and it is setting sda2 as the default boot, which is a Dell media partition and not the Windows 7 operating system. I did successfully load from LiveCD this time, so I'm going to try to see what I can find about stopping Windows 7 from overwriting the boot loader. Of course, if you have any solutions, please share.
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        #4
        Re: Issue Dual Booting Kubuntu and Windows 7

        If you have a Live CD with GParted on it, you could boot that and change the "boot" flag from /dev/sda2 to /dev/sda3. I'm not sure whether that will be sufficient or not .... :P
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          #5
          Re: Issue Dual Booting Kubuntu and Windows 7

          Well, even if I did that, I would only boot into Windows 7, and ideally I would like to have a menu to be able to boot into Kubuntu as well.
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            #6
            Re: Issue Dual Booting Kubuntu and Windows 7

            Oh sorry, I did not realize the Grub boot menu was disappearing too.

            Hmmm. I have Win 7 running on a VM, but I have never tried to dual boot with it. Does
            Code:
            sudo update-grub
            seem to function correctly, i.e. finding the other OS?

            It may be that there is some new boot-screwing feature in Win 7 -- I took a quick look on Ubuntu Forums and didn't see anything about it. Probably a little searching there will turn up someone's experience with it -- you can't be the first.
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              #7
              Re: Issue Dual Booting Kubuntu and Windows 7

              It seems to work fine when I run that:

              Generating grub.cfg ...
              Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic
              Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-21-generic
              Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
              Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda2
              done

              I do think it is Windows 7 overwriting something. I followed the instructions in this link (http://fosswire.com/post/2009/5/rest...rwritten-grub/) and successfully restored the grub menu and booted into Kubuntu. I am still worried that as soon as I boot into Windows 7 again the problem will reoccur. I am going to try that now.
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                #8
                Re: Issue Dual Booting Kubuntu and Windows 7

                I still have not solved this. I can get the GRUB menu back until I boot into Windows 7 again, and then the issue reoccurs. This is what happens at startup after restarting after booting into Windows 7:

                no module name found
                Aborted. Press any key to exit.
                Broadcom UNDI PXE-2.1 v11.0.9
                Copyright (C) 2000-2008 Broadcom Corporation
                Copyright (C) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation
                All rights reserved.
                PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
                PXE-M0F: Exiting Broadcom PCE ROM.
                Operating System not found

                I guess I should mention I have 64-bit OSes installed; I'm not sure if that makes a difference.

                I also realized that sda2 is the proper partition for Windows 7 to boot from. That is actually the Recovery partition, which, from what I have read, is where the OS is actually installed. I have set the sda5 partition with the boot flag, though, and that hasn't fixed the problem.
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                  #9
                  Re: Issue Dual Booting Kubuntu and Windows 7

                  Looks like maybe some clues down this thread:

                  http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=83632


                  I'm 100% confident that neither your Broadcom chip nor your 64-bit arch has anything to do with what Win 7 is doing. But, if you installed Grub to the partition, rather than the MBR of the hard drive, it looks like that would explain the problem.
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                    #10
                    Re: Issue Dual Booting Kubuntu and Windows 7

                    How can I install Grub to the MBR rather than the partition? I've been looking around, but none of the instructions are that clear to me.

                    (As for the delay in reply, I just moved. I'd really like to get this sorted out.)
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                      #11
                      Re: Issue Dual Booting Kubuntu and Windows 7

                      You need to review Section 3 and Section 4 of Mike's guide here:

                      http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3106368.0

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                        #12
                        Re: Issue Dual Booting Kubuntu and Windows 7

                        Well, I was doing that part right the whole time. I was correctly installing to the MBR, which is why it was strange to me to see these instructions of basically what I was doing not working. I found a thread on the Ubuntu forums that allowed me to find my problem. It was a program that comes installed on Dell computers -- Dell DataSafe local backup. I uninstalled that and the problem is gone.

                        http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1459782
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