problems with mbr / booting
 

i wanted to install the vista sp2 and thought i had to restore the original mbr(needed for sp1)

so i booted into ubuntu, made a quick search and ran "install-mbr /dev/sda" ( comes from debian )

problems began: vista won't boot anymore ( winload.exe corrupt 0xc000000e )
vista dvd hangs at loading disk.sys ( so does the winxp cd)
a (two year old) lilo fails( trying to map... 0x000e)

however: when booting into a live linux system (partedmagic) i can see and mount all partitions

things i have tried so far:
from win98se cd: fdisk /mbr
testdisk from partedmagic; rewriting the bpartition table and ( i think ) the bootsector?

any suggestions apart from backup and reinstall ?

Maybe you could try installing Linux in another partition and then install grub and finally add some lines to boot your Windows.

If the problem is the MBR, it should definitely solve it.


These are the lines I have in my menu.lst (grub config file) from my dual-boot eeepc:


Maybe you would have to change it, but it usually works for most cases.

Hope it works for you.

If he can boot into Ubuntu, why would he need to install Linux in a separate partition?

erk*;
Assuming you can still boot into Ubuntu, you can simply re-install GRUB from there. Please post your complete partition setup and confirm what is installed on each.

nah, tried that as well. there was a similar error, then i tried lilo ( i installed a minimal slackware 12.0 into a ramdisk)

i actually spent most of today on this problem.
further notes:
cfdisk complained about a partition behind the drive.
the second primary partition, fat32 had only garbage file names.
so i deleted all but the first primary ntfs partition, but still no luck!

but never mind; i gave up and am reinstalling right now.

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