(another) dual boot question

[jrawling]

Hi All,
I managed to bork a dual boot, 11.10 and Vista. I hardly ever boot to Vista, but now I need it.
Post clean install both OS's worked OK, then I got a trojan on my browser. I downloaded an offline checker, and ran it.
Next I tried to mount the Vista partition under 11.10 to nuke the virus and in the process of trying to mount the NTFS partitions rw I think I changed something that killed Vista.

The boot symptom is:
Power up, give Bios password, get Grub menu.
If I choose 11.10, no problem.
If I Choose Vista, I get a black screen for bout 2 seconds then the grub menu pops back up.
There are no error messages and no other clues.
I can't tell where the boot is failing. Is there a verbose mode in Grub somewhere?

I'd ask on a Windows forum, but you guys are smarter and likely can produce an answer where Googling 'till my eyes hurt produced nothing.

Thankyou,
Jim

[james147]

Isn't the windows answer to this type questions a complete reinstall?

Generally after getting a virus that is also the safest option as there is no telling what holes the virus left on your system... though I am probably a bit paranoid when it comes to that

As a side note, what do you need it for? I find there is very little that you cannot do either natively or in wine or a vm...

And as always, I would make sure you backup the data off that partition before trying anything else.

[jrawling]

If I had a rea install disk I would reinstall even though that would be a pain what with wiping out MBRs and wanting to take ove the whole drive..., but this is a Acer laptop with only a recovery partition and I don't want to let it trach the good parts of my drive, the Kubuntu parts.

My son play a few games on the dark sibe of the dual boot and I want to run a tax program (want is not the right verb) anyway I'll try wine again. It wouldn't work last year because of some lame copy protection.

[jrawling]

Sorry, folks
I'll turn on my spell checker if I can figure out how.
And mention that I have rerun Grub.

[zeefiryn]

I hope you still have that Vista recovery partition. In that case add it to grub and boot your laptop with it. You should be able to enter recovery system from there and hopefully reinstall missing files. If that would overwrite grub (although I don't think so) then you should be able to restore it from ubuntu cd.

[jrawling]

My quick and temporary solution has been to install virtualbox and a virtual XP under it, so I'm getting my job done. I have been a little loathe to use the install partition as it seems to want to "restore system defaults" and that might do serious damage to my partitioning. My son suggested getting (ie paying for) a copy of win 7 and installing that, but I'm not sure how to keep any M$ product from thinking it owns the ranch and trashing my drive. This is on a laptop of course, so there is only one physical drive.

Some sort of verbose boot might give me a clue as to what's pointed to the wrong file, or which file has gone awol. I have yet to find such a thing as a boot error log.

Probably the best thing to do would be to find another computer that I can keep in quaranteen or stick with a virtual box and get rid of the weird partitions completely. Every time I boot a M$ computer I get the feeing that the entire OS is a virus anyway...

Cheers and thanks for your ideas,
Jim

[Snowhog]

You can download and burn a Windows Vista Recovery Disc and use it to repair the MBR.

[jrawling]

I had a look at the web site previously and it looks like they way money for eveything they have available. I'd rather par for a full install disk if I have to part with cash.

signed cheap b--tard?
Jim

[zeefiryn]

I am not expert on copyright but is it illegal to borrow a Vista installation disc from your friend and use it to repeair your Vista installation? Since you have licence to use Vista how would you be breaking copyright by using installation CD/DVD (assuming that it is the same version as your system).

[jrawling]

That's worth a try if I can keep the install / repair from doing grevious harm to the Kubuntu partitions, which actually matter to me. Booting after the MBR gets overwritten I think I can deal with. Like boot from the CD or thumbdrive and run Grub. Or better, read a howto on this site before I wreak anything.

[SteveRiley]

I am not expert on copyright but is it illegal to borrow a Vista installation disc from your friend and use it to repeair your Vista installation? Since you have licence to use Vista how would you be breaking copyright by using installation CD/DVD (assuming that it is the same version as your system).

There is, unfortunately, little clarity about this.

If it worries you, and you are unable to obtain recovery media, you can build your own recovery CD from the Windows Automated Installation Toolkit.

[jrawling]

I had a quick look at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en...ng=en&id=10333 the link SteveRiley sent. I think that there is a catch 22 in that M$ wants me to run a system validator .exe that of course would require a sucessful boot. What am I missing?

[SteveRiley]

I didn't realize that link was behind a WGA. Try this:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en....aspx?id=10333

Note the subtle difference in the URLs


Edited to add: here's a direct link to the IMG file:
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...-LRMAIK_EN.img

Makes one question why they go to all the effort, when finding two workarounds was insanely trivial...

[SecretCode]

Makes one question why they go to all the effort, when finding two workarounds was insanely trivial...

There are whole departments in Microsoft whose only job is to make things more difficult ...

(at least, that's the only logical conclusion)

[SteveRiley]

Folks, it simply doesn't get any lamer than this. Watch in full screen to see the magic.

No WGA? No problem: