13.04 grub loops reboot for Win7 (sorry to ask)

[Greengoat]

Hi folks, this seems to be a popular topic of consternation but I am asking all the same becuase of my lack of progress on the problem.

I am trying to boot Ubuntu 13.04 and Win7 through Grub. Installed Win7 first and then 13.04 second on a fresh HD.
Win7 installs and runs fine but after 13.04 is fresh installed, the grub menu for win7 reboots the computer back into the grub menu. I have restored the mbr with both win command line tools and boot-repair and Win boots as normal. When I restore grub with boot-repair on a live usb, it takes me back to the same problem with the Win7 reboot but 13.04 loads fine. Fresh installs of both partition areas does the same.

Attached is boot info:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/5876045/

Thanks ahead of time and sorry about my lack of expertise.

-GG

[Mark Phelps]

It's likely that boot-repair could be corrupting Win7 by forcing the writing of GRUB to the Win7 boot folder.

What you need to do is the following:
1) Disconnect the Ubuntu drive -- and fix Win7 do it boots again
2) Disconnect the Win7 drive, connect the Ubuntu drive -- and fix Ubuntu so it boots again
3) Reconnect the Win7 drive, but continue to boot from the Ubuntu drive
4) In Ubuntu, open a terminal and enter "sudo update-grub". This will regenerate the GRUB config file and add an entry for Windows.

When you reboot, you should then see a GRUB menu and all the OSs should work OK.

[Greengoat]

Hi Mark, thanks for the advice.

I agree that boot-repair is placing grub on the drive in a way that is not allowing the win7 mbr to work, but the same results happen on a clean install of 13.05 from a live usb.

Also, from the boot report, you may be seeing that I have a small ubuntu 12.10 drive at dev/sdb. I have disconnected that. However my goal is to install win7 and 13.04 on partitions on a new 2TB drive at /dev/sda/ so I am not sure how I would disconnect or separate the two partitions during install.

Like you say, I can restore the MBR to the windows partition fine and it will boot windows straight with no grub. Or I can use boot-repair to put grub on and have the looping reboot that takes me back to the menu when I select the win7.

I have done a totally new install with windows installed on 400gb of unallocated space on the new drive and then installed ubuntu on the unallocated space of the remainder of the 2TB drive using the simple setup of the live image. Still same result.

Can I repair the MBR and install grub in a way that doesn't futz it up?

[oldfred]

Did/are you using EasyBCD? You have grub4dos in the Windows install which may be confusing things?
grub4dos uses the /grldr folder shown in your sda1 Windows boot partition.

[Greengoat]

Hi oldfred, thanks for the response.
My new boot info after the total clean install attempt is at:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/5876723/

But I wasn't using EasyBCD, just a straight install off a Win7 ISO burned to a USB with Unetbootin. I see the /grldr folders, but nothing marked grub4dos.

It seems that whenever the grub loader selects the windows to boot it just reboots the hardware. Restoring a generic MBR with boot repair brings windows back fine, but whenever I re-write grub, it produces the same problem.

Driving me nuts, thanks folks.

[oldfred]

Windows does not like duplicate file or folder names.

Line 16 of script still shows this:
Boot files: /grldr /bootmgr /Boot/BCD /grldr


Also sda1 shows as Vista type and sda2 as Windows 7/8 type. Did not even know there was a difference as they all boot with bootmgr. There is a difference with XP as it specifies ntldr.

[Greengoat]

Also sda1 shows as Vista type and sda2 as Windows 7/8 type. Did not even know there was a difference as they all boot with bootmgr. There is a difference with XP as it specifies ntldr.

Could boot-info just be calling the win7 system-reserved partition and the main win7 partition two different things because the system partition Is the same one used in Vista installations?

Could unetbootin have futzed things with the way it handled the win7 ISO?
Looking for how to change the boot script on sda1.

[oldfred]

Vista never had the separate Boot partition, the all the boot files were normally in the main install. With Windows 7 they added the boot partition primarily so you could encrypt the main install.

You might run chkdsk on sda1 as that will update it.

[Greengoat]

I offer the end to this sad tale with the hard-won knowledge that the win7 install image was not "factory fresh" as they say.
It installed grub for dos that ultimately conflicted with the smooth operation of the ubuntu grub2 install, causing the looping reboot of the win7 partition.

Beware of USB stick image loaders and anything else that might unknowingly install a bootloader that conflicts with grub2.
Thanks for the help folks. I have learned my lesson.