Windows has taken over the MBR

[Alex Carroll]

Hey, yesterday I tried to Dual Boot Windows with Hardy. Hardy was already installed, and had been for a few months, so I used a separate drive for Windows. In an attempt to preserve Ubuntu's GRUB loader, I unplugged both the Ubuntu drive and my 500GB tertiary hard drive, leaving a single 40GB hard drive readable by the Computer. Windows installed fine, my games ran, and I assumed all was well.

However, when I reconnected my other 40GB drive and my tertiary drive, I found that Windows booted as normal, with no GRUB in sight.

So my question is, how can I restore GRUB's rightful place as my bootloader? I understand I can use the Ubuntu Live CD to do it, but am unsure if this will result in me losing either my Ubuntu installation or my Windows installation.

Thanks in advance.

Some possibly relevant info:
The two 40GB hard drives are the same model, connected via IDE using a single cable with two IDE connectors.
The 500GB drive is a SATA one, used for all my data storage.

[sandysandy]

u can definitely do that.

see this thread

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224351

or use super grub disk.

[Alex Carroll]

Another question: Will Windows be on the GRUB boot menu when I restore it or will I have to add it manually?

Super Grub Disk looks like a good option at the moment, so I'll probably try that.

[Alex Carroll]

Well, a lot has happened.

First, I was getting error 17: Cannot boot from partition. I manually edited the menu.lst file to boot the right drive and right partition, but now I am presented with:


*Checking file systems...
1244
fsck 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
fsck.ext3: Unable to resolve 'UUID=398bcef7-834c-40b3-868d-22394dda40c5'
fsck died with exit status 8

* File system check failed.
A log is being saved in /var/log/fsck/checkfs if that location is writeable.
Please repair the system manually.
* A maintenance shell will now be started.
CONTROL-D will terminate this shell and resume system boot.
bash: no job control in this shell
bash: groups: command not found
bash: lesspipe: command not found
bash: Command: command not found
bash: The: command not found
bash: dircolors: command not found
bash: Command: command not found
bash: The: command not found

Help!

EDIT: Ctrl+D lets me continue to boot successfully, but this message shows at each boot. I'd really appreaciate it if someone could shine a bit of light on what has gone wrong :)

[Alex Carroll]

Well I solved it :D

Turns out that I had left a couple of lines in the /etc/fstab file that said the drive with UUID 398bcef7-834c-40b3-868d-22394dda40c5 was ext3, back before I reformatted it for Windows. I removed this line and now reboots are clean.