Unable to boot into Windows

[abinjacob]

Hi
I am having a Toshiba laptop which was having Vista. I installed CAE Linux. Now I formatted the partition of CAE Linux from the disk management option of Vista. After this I was getting GRUB Error 17. Getting some information about MBR, I got the tip of putting zeros in the first 446 bytes of MBR so that Windows can start booting. I used the command dd for that. Now nothing is happening when I restarted the machine. Please help me to find a solution for my problem. Thanks in advance.

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

Check this Microsoft Vista HowTo for using your Vista installation disk to repair your Windows bootloader:

How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows Vista

Let us know how it goes.

[Coburn64]

When you say, nothing is happening, do you get a blank screen after your laptop's BIOS screen disappears? If so, that's the issue. I would try to repair your vista (boot from the vista install cd, and on the "install vista" screen, select "Repair your computer").

Otherwise, I would recommend buying a external HDD, downloading a LiveCD of a linux distro via another PC and burning it to CD, then copy all your data from your laptop to the external HDD, and then do a factory restore. You'll get it sorted one way or another.