Disk boot failure.......hit enter but GRUB is installed

prickee · 05-08-2011, 10:13 PM

Info: Dual boot system - Win7 and Debian 6
My partitions: /dev/sda2 Win7
/dev/sda5 / *boot*
/dev/sda6 /home
/dev/sda7 swap

On bootup I get the famous Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter. After I hit enter grub loads and can boot into debian or Win7. Did I do something wrong during installation? Did I install grub in the wrong place??

All help is appreciated thanks

hilyard · 05-08-2011, 10:51 PM

NeoSmart makes EasyBCD. I had to first make a Windows rescue disk using Win7, then take "boot" flag off / partition (a primary partition) and use an extended partition for the /home and swap, etc.
Then I had to reformat the 200MB Win7 boot partition and use the Rescue disk (an image?) to boot that OS.
then install easyBCD. Four partitions total for my first dual-boot -- Win7 & peppermint -- on a lenovo laptop (first laptop). Works well now, using Windows Boot manager.

syg00 · 05-08-2011, 11:03 PM

Just remove the boot flag off the Linux partition (grub doesn't use it), and put it on /dev/sda2.

That's probably just a crappy BIOS looking for a bootable primary partition.

prickee · 05-09-2011, 10:47 AM

How can I move boot flag onto my sda2 Win7 partition?

Boot from dvd and run grub-install /dev/hda2?
or is there a way to do it with debian?

widget · 05-09-2011, 11:16 AM

Use Gparted.

Right click on the flag and use the option manage flags.

If gparted is not installed, as root;

Code:

apt-get gparted

prickee · 05-09-2011, 12:01 PM

here is a screenshot, I moved boot from my /root to /dev/sdb2 Win7
or should I put boot flag on /sdb1?

widget · 05-09-2011, 02:37 PM

I would give it a shot like it is but I believe that MS uses a boot partition and so it may be sda1 would be a better choice.

Trying it as it is should not hurt. If it doesn't work boot back to a real OS and change it again.