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Sorry if this is in the wrong section, but from the desperation of this section it seemed the most appropriate place. I have a laptop which was originally running Windows ...
  1. 03-08-2009 #1
    WillyVWade
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    Vista recovery with GRUB?

    Sorry if this is in the wrong section, but from the desperation of this section it seemed the most appropriate place.

    I have a laptop which was originally running Windows Vista, I attempted to install Windows XP on via USB since the laptop couldn't boot the install disk (this has turned out to be a bad disk drive. This fell flat on its back and wouldn't even finish the install (although not before formating the Vista install in to oblivion). Although I was EXTREMELY careful to leave the Vista recovery intatct.

    So I managed to get Ubuntu 8.10 (XFCE if that makes any difference) installed over USB. I was wondering, Could I use the GRUB louder to boot into the recovery drive?

    PS. Laptop is a Toshiba Equium L350D
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  2. 03-08-2009 #2
    Jonathan183
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    Welcome to the forums WillyVWade

    Grub does not load Windows directly it chainloads the Windows bootloader. You could give Supergrub a try ... this may allow you to boot the recovery partition.
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  3. 03-09-2009 #3
    yancek
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    vista has a different bootloader than xp and they don't work together. If the SuperGrub Disk doesn't help, you might try EasyBCD for vista to repair it's bootloader or google install xp after vista to see if you can find some information.
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  4. 03-09-2009 #4
    WillyVWade
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jonathan183 View Post
    Welcome to the forums WillyVWade

    Grub does not load Windows directly it chainloads the Windows bootloader. You could give Supergrub a try ... this may allow you to boot the recovery partition.
    I can't get this to work on USB (laptop has no floppy and can't boot from the disk drive).

    When I get to the GRUB section I just get an "error 15".
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  5. 03-09-2009 #5
    Jonathan183
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    If you can't boot from CD or USB ... I think the only option left is to put the drive in another PC
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  6. 03-09-2009 #6
    WillyVWade
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    I got SuperGRUB working. But I've no idea how to get it to boot the hidden partition which I need to boot into to recover Vista.
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  7. 03-10-2009 #7
    Jonathan183
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    Try here for booting the recovery partition
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  8. 03-13-2009 #8
    bobhjon
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    I just upgraded my Vista Premium to Vista Ultimate. The Installation seemed to go OK and booted into the custmizing screen, but when the new system finally booted, I get a string of messages ending with Boot Failed and when I press any key, I get a GRUB4DOS prompt. TAB gives me a mass of possible commands none of which I understand, and ESC gives me a boot selection screen with Vista, XP, and Command Line with the latter selected. Selecting Vista and Entering gives me the same Boot Failed as previously.

    I seem to vaguely recall having installed some distribution of Linux about 2 years ago, but deleted it to recover the disk space. It probably left some sort of residual dual boot loader, but I've never had XP installed on this system.

    Can you help me get out of this mess?
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