LILO for phantom linux
 

A while ago, I tried some backup and recovery program, the brand of which I cannot remember (possibly paragon ?), and tried to recover some backup in the brand specific boot time environment.
The whole thing did not work (the boot time environment didn't load), and it left a piece of dirt in my computer that looked like this.
Only it used to give me another option besides the present "Win Vista/2000" that was "Linux", so I gues the recovery environment had to be some kind of linux package. In trying to update my windows to windows 10, the selector has somehow lost the "linux" option that used to be there.

I've managed to get along so far selecting the real operating system (it doesn't even have a countdown, so it's really bothersome). But I suspect the whole operating system selector is doing some weird things to my computer now, and I want to get rid of it for good. Does anyone have any clue as to what "linux loader" is it from its look, and what should I do to get rid of it, in a windows 7 environment?

Thank you for answering :)

Lilo (Linux Loader) is a bootloader which was very commonly used on most Linux systems in years gone by but now most systems use either Grub or Grub2. I don't see any reference to Linux Loader in the image you posted which is from windows based on the drive naming convention.

If you upgraded whatever windows you had to windows 10 then it has overwritten the MBR. That's expected behavior and standard windows installs won't boot Linux although they can but it is a multi-step process and not simple for someone not familiar with windows bootloaders.

Why was there a Linux entry previously, did you have some Linux version installed? What exactly do you see referencing Linux Loader?

I used "LILO" as a concept. A long time ago, at home I used to have a computer (I wasn't the admin) running linux/windows that had a LILO loader. I don't have any evidence of this one loader being either lilo, grub, or anything else.

I think the recovery environment of my backup/recovery program was some specially purposed Linux, that was attempted to be installed and failed, and I think that is why there was a Linux selection in this loader.

Now you're telling me this is windows based? So why doesn't the rewriting of the MBR make my problem vanish?

Thank you, yancek!