Problem Dual Booting Windows 7 64 bit after Ubuntu 12.04 installation

[Rjbcc58]

From the thread you provided:

I have found a solution.

To get the Ubuntu live installer (normal version) to detect the drive, in the 'Try Ubuntu before Installing' option, open a terminal and try the commands on this page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...ID#Load_dmraid. I think all that is needed is
# modprobe dm_mod
# dmraid -ay
# ls -la /dev/mapper/
Then you can open the installer in the Live session and install.

You must also go back to Windows and open the 'Intel Rapid Storage Technology' application and go to the 'Accelerate' Tab. Disable acceleration (this will not lose any data but will automatically back up some data if you are using maximised option). Then you should be able to restart into GRUB. You may need to try reinstalling GRUB (Google it). If the GRUB screen is present then you can go back to Windows and re-enable acceleration in 'Intel Rapid Storage Technology'.

Hope this works for everyone else.

Is this the solution you are talking about? I am at work right now but will be trying this when I get home, but I am trying to make an effort to understand what I'm actually doing here. Again, I apologize for any ignorance but can you explain some things for me:

What exactly will the above commands do? The OP states this will allow the Ubuntu Live installer to recognize my drive, and then install the full version. Is this what you would instruct me to do at this point?

I am concerned about the partitions I made (based on what I'm seeing in gparted on live usb) that simply 'disappeared', or more aptly, 'reverted' to the state the harddrive originally was before I began this trip down linux lane. Is my actual Ubuntu 12.04 install still there? Should I repartition and go through the same installation steps I originally did after running the above commands?

My next question is how exactly should I install grub afterwards? I think we have concluded that my original mistake was writing to the same drive windows was in... does that mean I wrote grub to the the OS partition on the sda? Or did i write it to the 'RECOVERY' partition? Where exactly does the 'MBR' sit?

Thanks in advance for any responses, I am trying to learn as much as I can. I will be back at it this afternoon.

Edit: Typos, clarification.

[oldfred]

I guess the bottom line is, do you want to keep the Intel Smart Response or not. It seems that is some sort of RAID which I do not understand.

The previous user decided he did not want the Intel Smart response so he deleted the RAID. That then made two drives, one the SSD and the hard drive.

I am not a fan of RAID on most desktops. Before SSDs power users might use RAID to speed up system processes that were hard drive intensive like a compile of a kernel or major application. SSDs are now even faster. But you cannot type faster, nor is download faster, so most desktop use does not get faster. Also some think RAID is a backup, but it is not as if you delete a file it is still gone. We backed up our RAID servers at work every night on a daily, weekly, monthly tape rotation.

So I have a SSD to speed up booting & loading larger applications, but it still is a luxury for most things as they still run from RAM and that has not changed. I also like having multiple drives, but like having a different or another copy of a operating system on every drive, and each drive fully configured to boot without the other drive. Data then can be on either drive and system may complain if it cannot boot a data partition but will still boot.

[Rjbcc58]

I think I understand a little better now. It sounds to me like the 32gb msata is not entirely necessary for me, however I was able to turn the 'RAID' off and switch it to 'ACHI' and it did not make any significant changes. I was able to see an 'ssid' along with boot to usb, boot to cd drive, etc. at loadup, but that was about the only change I noticed.

As for my other questions though do you have any idea?

I already partioned my drive, and then I already installed Ubuntu and confirmed this via gparted and boot-info, so is it normal for these to totally revert like they'd never happen, after simply rewriting the MBR (I believe rewriting the mbr from testdisk was what caused this). Likewise, is it concerning that boot-repair tells me 'no OS found'...?

I must stress again I am a beginner so I basically looking for baby steps to get my machine working again.

[oldfred]

I would not think testdisk would rewrite the partition table without the Linux partitions unless you specifically selected only the old partitions and then told it to write a new partition table.

We have seen Windows (Vendor's) recovery partition in just starting rewrite partition table and then had to use testdisk to recover old table, but sometimes the vendor recover totally erases drive and recreates it to as purchased. Or no recovery is possible.

Why anytime major system changes require good backups first.

MBR is very first sector on the hard drive before any partitions. Partition also have a boot sector often called PBR which is first sector in partition and not used to store data.

Very new systems now use UEFI/gpt not BIOS/MBR where MBR is the partitioning type with a MBR as the first sector.

The first part of a MBR is IPL or initial program loader or just boot code, last part ot MBR is the partition table.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record

[Rjbcc58]

Thank you oldfred, I appreciate the help and am learning a lot. With a combination of windows system recovery repair attempts, bootrec's, boot-repairs, and playing around with the Intel smart storage, I can now boot back into Windows 7 (no data loss either).

I am now about to start round two of my installation, using the tips from the thread you showed me. I may be contacting you again in the near future

[oldfred]

Glad you got Windows back ok. I might do a full backup as it is, just to be on the safe side.

The vendor recovery DVDs are just an image of your drive as purchased. If you have housecleaned a lot of cruft normally included, run many updates with many reboots, and added software you may want a full back up.
Backup windows before install - post by Mark Phelps
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1626990
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp
Another suggestion by srs5694
http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm