Grub update - Can no longer boot Vista

[sdpkelkar]

Hi.
I am a total noob on Linux and recently installed Ubuntu (Karmic Koala) on a Dell Inspiron 1525 which already had Vista installed on it. The installation went just fine and I could boot into either Ubuntu or Vista using the Grub bootloader options. After updating grub through the update manager however, I can no longer boot into Vista and get an error message that says

"Windows cannot start. A recent upgrade or hardware change may have caused this (blah
blah)

And below that:

File: \boot\bcd
Status: 0xc000000e
info: An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data"

When I run sudo fdisk -l, I get the following:

(http://www.vistaheads.com/forums/#)Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000080

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 6 48163+ de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 7 13619 109345113+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 13619 15936 18605117+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 15937 19457 28282432+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 19066 19457 3148708+ dd Unknown
/dev/sda6 15937 18930 24049242 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 18931 19065 1084356 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

I have the Vista recovery disk but was wondering whether using it to repair the Vista bootloader might mess up Grub. Any advice would be appreciated!

[oldfred]

There are several commands in the Vista repair if you do it from the command line. Do not run fixboot as that will overwrite the MBR with grub. It is not all that difficult to reinstall grub if necessary. I think if you run the automatic repair it will overwrite grub.

How to restore the Ubuntu/XP/Vista/7 bootloader (Updated for Ubuntu 9.10)
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1014708

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392
You will need to boot with your Vista/Windows 7 installation disk. Hit Enter at the language selection prompt then hit "R" to get to the repair section. You can then select the automatic boot repair tool, but it often will not do any good. Then select the command prompt (console) and type in the following commands:
BootRec.exe /fixmbr #updates MBR master boot record do not run if you still want grub
BootRec.exe /FixBoot #updates PBR partition boot
BootRec.exe /ScanOs
BootRec.exe /RebuildBcd

[darkod]

You have to be very careful when using a recovery disc, and depending what sort of disc it is. If it's one of the discs allowing to repair the boot process, fine, but if you are actually talking about the restore disc coming with the computer, that kind of disc can easily delete all the hdd and recreate the factory default setup.

So depending what we are talking about, be VERY CAREFUL!!!

[sdpkelkar]

Thanks a ton! I'll try it out.

[sdpkelkar]

Voila! All I had to do was boot from the recovery disk and select the startup and repair tool. The problem was a corrupted BCD file..and now everything works just fine. Many thanks!

[Gen2ly]

Thanks oldfred. This is exactly what I needed. Ignoring the /fixmbr and doing the following three commands fixed the problem. Not sure why installed Grub broke this but it's working good now.