HOW-TO restoring XP and Vista Bootloader & Restoring GRUB

[kenanton]

Thanks lswest your instructions worked perfectly!

[lswest]

Thanks lswest your instructions worked perfectly!

Glad it was helpful for you!

[lowtolerance]

You're a lifesaver, lswest! I accidentally installed grub to /dev/sda1, and successfully corrupted my NTFS partition, just days after getting rid of the restore partition that HP was kind enough to include on my computer.

The Vista Recovery Disk worked great, and very quickly. At first it sounded as though it wouldn't work, as it didn't recognize my drive as being NTFS formatted, but after I told it to fix startup issues, I was back on my feet and praising you. Thanks again for the info.

[thegizmoguy]

You may just want to mention that if you are dual booting like I am with Vista installed over XP and Ubuntu installed over Vista, that restoring the Vista boot loader will also bring you back to dual-booting again.

[ceverhar]

While all of this info was helpful, for some reason my computer is not showing my Vista installation.

bootrec /fixmbr worked fine, but bootrec /fixboot said "Element cannot be found" Also when I go to the recovery options my vista installation is not showing up, which it should (it has in the past when I had to do recovery). GRUB keeps giving me a loading error 17.

I also cannot boot into the Live CD (gives me I/O errors even though the drive is fine) or into Vista, so I have a computer with no bootable operating system.

[lswest]

While all of this info was helpful, for some reason my computer is not showing my Vista installation.

bootrec /fixmbr worked fine, but bootrec /fixboot said "Element cannot be found" Also when I go to the recovery options my vista installation is not showing up, which it should (it has in the past when I had to do recovery). GRUB keeps giving me a loading error 17.

I also cannot boot into the Live CD (gives me I/O errors even though the drive is fine) or into Vista, so I have a computer with no bootable operating system.

First off, have you checked the CD for errors (the option in the liveCD menu towards the bottom). If it has errors, burning the image again at a slower burn speed should help.

If you can boot to the liveCD (try it in safe graphics mode which should be under F6 options I believe), can you post the output of

sudo fdisk -l

It may also be possible that the hard drive is dying, how old is the computer (roughly)?

@thegizmoguy: I added the info to the original post.
@lowtolerance: Glad I could help out

[ceverhar]

Well, I re-downloaded the live cd and burned it using the slowest possible speed. Can't boot, even trying the 'safe graphics mode'. Still getting I/O errors. However, after stating all these I/O errors, I can type commands in 'initramfs'.

I have 3 drives: 1. vista 2. ubuntu 3. media/important files

So would reinstalling vista fix my problem? At this point I'm just trying to rescue my computer. I think my problem is a boot loader (or something) isn't properly recognizing the operating systems loaded on my computer.

Thanks for all of your help.

[lswest]

I would boot to the Vista Recovery, go to "advanced" choose the recovery console and give in

chkdsk C: /F /R

to check for errors, then try the automated startup recovery application, then try restoring the bootloader again using the bootrec commands. If it still doesn't work after the bootrec, also run

bootrec /ScanOs
bootrec /RebuildBcd

to scan for vista installs, and to create a new boot configuration data store for the bootloader, it shouldn't have any negative side effects, but I'm not 100% sure. If that also doesn't work, a re-install may be in order. However, the above commands should get your system booting into Vista again, and you can decide what to do from there.

If you want to get Ubuntu working, write down a few of the I/O errors so we can work with those if you'd like.

If you get Vista running again, I'd look into a hard disk diagnostics program to check your hard disk for errors. Maybe someone else can suggest a few (I can't recall any off the top of my head).

[ceverhar]

OK, well the check disc didn't come up with any errors. bootrec /fixmbr worked, bootrec /fixboot still shows "Element not found".

bootrec /rebuildbcd finds my windows install and asks "add installation to boot list?" I hit yes and it says "element not found".

I just tried the auto recovery, only errors are "system partition table ... fixed" I'm assuming thats the linux install. It seems my problem is with the bootloader. I would rather not re-install vista, but if push comes to shove, I'll do it.

My only fear is that reinstalling Vista won't fix the bootloader. Is that ligitimate?

[ceverhar]

The problem is I can't boot into ANY OS atm. Including a Live CD.

This is what happens when I try to boot from a Live CD:
BusyBox ...etc...loads then
(initramfs) [70.503367] end_request: I/O error, dev sr0, sector 1431624
[70.503425] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 357906

It pretty much continues with [xx.xxxxxx] changing in the beginning. The sector and logical block numbers do not change. I'm at a complete loss as to what I should do.

BTW, all my equipment is fairly new (~1.5yrs old) and works perfectly fine. (ASUS M2N-32 Sli Deluxe, 9800gt, all seagate hdds, 4gig ocz reaper ram, amd 4600+)