windows wont boot after changes made in grub

[Mr_]

Hello, noobie here and I messed up my system that was working very nice for me.
I hope someone can help me.

My computer originally had Vista installed on a sata hdd, and I added a second hdd (IDE) to
install Ubuntu 8.04 and had been working great. Everything installed easy.

few months ago I downloaded and reinstalled 9.10. That also worked good.
I have been telling others about how well it has been working for me. I haven't had any trouble fixing
any of the minor problems that I did come across like playing encrypted dvds.

Well last week I upgraded to 10.04 using update mgr and it wanted to update grub. so i went ahead and let it.

after rebooting to Ubuntu (which is now a little slower than 9.10), the login screen page was shifted to the right. everything else was fine after logging in.

windows also booted up ok. I found some info on a forum that helped me change resolution
for grub, and I think I may have done more custom changes that I read online.

everything seemed ok until this week. I try to boot into windows but after selecting the windows loader, the page just goes black and does nothing (cpu fan is working hard and doesn't slow)

im not sure if i moved grub to wrong partition or if its configured to boot the right windows partition.

I have two partitions on sata hdd. one is just the windows recovery.
the IDE has Ubuntu only.

please! any help would be appreciated.

[cms9000]

Go into your BIOS and put the Windows hard drive first so the computer will boot into it. If it doesn't boot then the problem is with Vista. If it does boot try and reinstall grub2 in Ubuntu (just put the hard drives back in the right order before booting into Ubuntu and reinstalling grub2.)

Or if you are not familiar with playing around in the BIOS then with your computer off just unhook all your drives except for the Vista one and see if it boots up.

[Mr_]

I have removed the IDE HHD that has ubuntu on it before in the past before any of this happened, and would not boot into windows (that is on a SATA HHD), but worked when they were together.

I just tried again hoping for some luck but it still dosnt boot by itself.
I'm not sure what drive I put grub on, all I know is it all worked great
before I upgraded to 10.04 then I had the problem with my loggin screen being shifted to one side.
so I entered some stuff into a terminal that I got from this forum I think, and finaly got that fixed. Now I have this problem.

How can I check to see if grub is on the right HHD and also I read something about windows should be sda1

If i remember correctly It is sdb1 HD1,1 and sdb2 Hd1,2 in grub

[cms9000]

It does boot into Ubuntu, correct?

If it doesn't boot into Windows 7 it may have been something Win 7 did, an update, etc. Windows hates to share booting, lol. You could try this first to reinstall Windows 7 MBR, just keep the Win 7 only hard drive in when you do it.

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

After that, if you can boot into Ubuntu, reinstall grub 2 in the terminal.

sudo grub-install /dev/*** (***=to the hard drive MBR you want it on, example sda, hda, hdd, sdc....)

[Mr_]

Since I have two hard drives. Should grub be on same one as ubuntu, or on the one with vista?

[cms9000]

I would put it on the same one as Ubuntu, leave the Windows MBR there just incase. Have the Ubuntu Hard drive is the first one, Windows as the second.

[Mr_]

below is some info. I removed the hdd that has ubuntu on it. im trying to restore windows and not concerned about the data on other drive, so I unplugged it.

so this drive has two partitions, the smaller is vista recovery (its about 8Gb)

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV VVVVVVVVVVVVVVV


Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010

============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================

=> Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in
partition #1 for /boot/grub.

sda1: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ntfs
Boot sector type: Grub 2
Boot sector info: Grub 2 is installed in the boot sector of sda1 and
looks at sector 275863 of the same hard drive for
core.img, but core.img can not be found at this
location. No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System:
Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /BOOT/BCD

sda2: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ntfs
Boot sector type: Grub 2
Boot sector info: Grub 2 is installed in the boot sector of sda2 and
looks at sector 275863 of the same hard drive for
core.img, but core.img can not be found at this
location. No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System: Windows Vista
Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /Boot/BCD

=========================== Drive/Partition Info: =============================

Drive: sda ___________________ __________________________________________________ ___

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441648 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xaa480419

Partition Boot Start End Size Id System

/dev/sda1 63 17,462,654 17,462,592 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 17,463,296 234,436,607 216,973,312 7 HPFS/NTFS


blkid -c /dev/null: __________________________________________________ __________

Device UUID TYPE LABEL

/dev/loop0 squashfs
/dev/sda1 7AF0B2FAF0B2BBA7 ntfs
/dev/sda2 5E74B68174B65C09 ntfs Windows

============================ "mount | grep ^/dev output: ===========================

Device Mount_Point Type Options


=============================== StdErr Messages: ===============================

umount: /tmp/BootInfo0/sda2: device is busy
umount: /tmp/BootInfo0/sda2: device is busy

[Mr_]

Also im running on a live ubuntu cd.

[devils casper]

Its just a GRUB/BIOS compatibility problem. We(I) have to start from a scratch. When you boot up from SATA disk having Windows OS and Ubuntu, what does appear at startup? Does GRUB Menu appear? Are you able to boot up any OS from Hard disk?

[Mr_]

finally got the windows recovery disc to repair mbr
i misread directions from the site cms9000 posted above,
and didnt enter the comands right. first i did

bootrec.exe/FixMbr then
bootrec.exe/FixBoot and it worked

I plugged my other drive in and all is working. but I still find booting up in v10.04 is a bit slower than 9.10