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earthy
Tux's lil' helper
Tux's lil' helper


Joined: 07 Jul 2006
Posts: 147

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 1:49 pm    Post subject: Windows 7 dualboot. Reply with quote

I had a working hd with win7 and gentoo.My harddisk failed,but not so badly to make it unreadable.It just stops
responding after 15 minutes or so.I was able to clone the partitions to
another disk that was already in use.Cloning the whole disk was never an option.
Gentoo worked ofc after minor mods.
Windows ofc did not work.
If someone is interested in what I tried I will try to refresh on that.
I can mount both partitions with ntfs3g and they seem fine.
My motherboard has no connector for IDE so I have no cdrom nor dvdrom.
I have no access to another win7.
When I boot up on the windows partition the cursor just blinks.
If I try to start up on the recovery partition it says bootmgr is missing.I tried to use all the partition programs on ebcd but they at most destroyed the boot partition.I am sorry for bringing this up on gentoo forum but I got lost in the microsoft support forum before being able to post a question.I am also almost sure I won't get an answer from there
I guess I need some recovery .iso to recover the recovery partition :D
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audiodef
Watchman
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Joined: 06 Jul 2005
Posts: 6639
Location: The soundosphere

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 2:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I recently accidentally formatted my Windows partition (I was being stupid and typed mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda1 out of habit instead of the correct /dev/sdc1). This led me to have to redo my dual-boot setup. Along the way, I discovered that the Windows 7 installer creates a boot partition on the boot drive and installs the boot manager there. This was annoying, since I wanted it all on one partition, and since my boot drive was sdc, I ended up with Windows on sda and the Windows boot manager on sdc1, which got overwritten when I installed Grub on sdc1 (and which makes Windows unbootable because chainloader has nothing to go on). I had to physically switch sda and sdc so that Windows 7 installed everything on sda instead of Windows on sda and the boot manager on sdc (incidentally, the Windows 7 installer will not let you install Windows unless you basically have no other formatted partitions. #@!$%ing Microsh*t!). But I got it done and Windows created sda1 and sda2, and then I restored Gentoo on sdc, with Grub on sdc1 chainloading Windows on /dev/sda1 and switched the hard drives back so sdc became the BIOS default disk again.

So you have two options. You can redo it all from scratch (I know, know!) or there's apparently some trick with booting a utilities disk of some kind that will repair the Windows boot manager. I don't know what disk image that is or where to get it, but I'm sure you can find it.

I hope this helps. Windows is such a PITA.

I wonder if you'd have better luck installing XP and upgrading to 7. I don't think XP pulled this "separate boot partition" crap.
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earthy
Tux's lil' helper
Tux's lil' helper


Joined: 07 Jul 2006
Posts: 147

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 3:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In fact I have spent quite some time looking for the perfect iso.Trinity Rescue Kit | CPR for your computer is the latest one I am downloading and am going to try that.If that doesn work I just thought of trying to boot the computer from the recovery partition on the broken disk.The biggest problem is that most of the solutions rely on you having a cdrom drive.To demistify how I installed win7 it was done on another mobo that had an ide connector.To my surprise I could use windows from that disk for months without problems with the new motherboard.I will go to great lengths before reinstalling win7 as that means I will have to reinstall hundreds of programs.That is the most boring thing to do.
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djdunn
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Joined: 26 Dec 2004
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 3:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

theres usb hard drives, usb optical drives too
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creaker
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Joined: 14 Jul 2012
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 5:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

audiodef wrote:
I don't think XP pulled this "separate boot partition" crap.


Windows 7 also can be installed without separate boot partition. In order to avoid creating win7 boot partition, you should make partitioning by hand before starting win7 installation and avoid leaving unallocated space on your harddrives. If win7 installer will found unallocated free space, it will create a boot partition. Whether installer can't found free space, it creates boot directory in existing ntfs partition.
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audiodef
Watchman
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Joined: 06 Jul 2005
Posts: 6639
Location: The soundosphere

PostPosted: Tue Apr 16, 2013 3:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

creaker wrote:
audiodef wrote:
I don't think XP pulled this "separate boot partition" crap.


Windows 7 also can be installed without separate boot partition. In order to avoid creating win7 boot partition, you should make partitioning by hand before starting win7 installation and avoid leaving unallocated space on your harddrives. If win7 installer will found unallocated free space, it will create a boot partition. Whether installer can't found free space, it creates boot directory in existing ntfs partition.


I thought I tried that, but I must have still not gotten it right. :roll:
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creaker
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 16, 2013 5:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here my harddrive structure:

Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, всего 1465149168 секторов
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000d6208
Code:

Device  Boot     Start        End         Blocks    Id  System
/dev/sda1            2048    51202047    25600000   83  Linux
/dev/sda2        51202048   102402047    25600000   83  Linux
/dev/sda3   *   102402048   184322047    40960000    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       184322048  1465147391   640412672    5  Extended
/dev/sda5       184324096  1465147391   640411648    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT


sda1 - Arch Linux - 25 Cb
sda2 - Gentoo - 25Gb
sda3 - Windows 7 - 40Gb
sda5 - storage partition - 640 Gb.

I have no Windows boot partition. Only Boot directory under Windows partition (first entry of ls output)

Code:
chord@gentoo / $ ls -l /media/F0D90009D8FFCC3A/
total 7309352
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root       8192 mar 15 23:45 Boot
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root     383786 mar 15 23:45 bootmgr
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root       8192 mar 15 22:27 BOOTSECT.BAK
lrwxrwxrwx 2 root root         60 jul 14  2009 Documents and Settings -> /media/F0D90009D8FFCC3A/Users
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3207569408 apr 13 03:09 hiberfil.sys
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root          0 mar 16 00:18 Intel
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root          0 apr 13 03:22 MSOCache
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root          0 mar 16 00:31 NVIDIA
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4276760576 apr 13 03:09 pagefile.sys
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root       4096 apr 13 03:22 ProgramData
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root       8192 apr 13 03:22 Program Files
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root       8192 apr 13 03:23 Program Files (x86)
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root          0 mar 15 23:32 Recovery
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root          0 mar 15 23:42 $Recycle.Bin
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root       4096 apr 13 03:22 System Volume Information
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root       4096 mar 15 23:34 Users
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root      16384 apr 13 03:23 Windows
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earthy
Tux's lil' helper
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Joined: 07 Jul 2006
Posts: 147

PostPosted: Mon Apr 22, 2013 4:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for the tips.This is a time consuming problem as I so rarely reboot gentoo.
But I found out mirroring failed while trying testdisk on partitions.Am going to pull data from partition and make it smaller and retry in next boot.
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tox2ik
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Joined: 15 Jun 2009
Posts: 15

PostPosted: Thu Apr 25, 2013 9:29 pm    Post subject: What exactly are you asking about? Reply with quote

Are you asking about how to properly do backups or how to restore the "lost" windows?

Assuming the second, the by far easiest (time effective) solution is to boot the recovery / installation windows disk and run the "windows repair". That doesn't always work though. I remember reading somewhere that in may be helpful to clone the whole first track of the disk (track zero) in order to restore a cloned windows partition. I also remember having once failed to boot a windows partition after restoring it with DriveImage XML which supposedly "takes care" of booting. Anyway I think you need both the first track and the volume boot sector (from partition).

http://www.easeus.com/resource/partition-boot-sector.htm
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/termsb/g/volbootsector.htm

btw. disc writers come with sata interfaces too.
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earthy
Tux's lil' helper
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Joined: 07 Jul 2006
Posts: 147

PostPosted: Thu Jun 27, 2013 12:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sorry I haven't answered as I have been moving and will be moving again soon.I haven't worked much on this problem but I have tried making a iso from my win7 installation disk.Then using unetbootin to make a bootable usb.I just found out today that I probably need a ntfs formatted usb to do that,but unetbootin doesn't show ntfs partitions on usb.
Code:
   Mount is denied because the NTFS volume is already exclusively opened.
The volume may be already mounted, or another software may use it which
could be identified for example by the help of the 'fuser' command.         
Code:
fuser -m /media/usb
returns nothing I don't know any other way to make a bootable usb from iso.tox2ik I am asking how to restore the lost windows.I have a backup of the windows partition,I just cannot use it.I don't have no sata nor usb cd/dvd drive and no ide interface on mobo.so booting from dvd/cd is not an option.How can I clone track zero without destroying gentoo which is on the hard disc I cloned to ? If I had a little cash I would buy a new hd and clone the whole bad disk to it.
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d2_racing
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Joined: 25 Apr 2005
Posts: 13047
Location: Ste-Foy,Canada

PostPosted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 12:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

creaker wrote:


I have no Windows boot partition. Only Boot directory under Windows partition (first entry of ls output)


I think that the Windows boot partition is there only when your motherboard is set to UEFI BOOT.
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