REboot to BIOS before Windows loads.

Hey there,



I've just gotten an Acer Aspire 6920, which came with Windows Vista SP1 preinstalled (Beforehand, let me just say I normally use Linux, the only reason I want to keep this operating system is because there MIGHT be some programs that don't have native replacements, or run in wine that I may need at university - Without that,, I wouldn't even bother with Windows, apologies to Microsoft.)



After the usual "Hey there, you bought an Acer, let us preinstall about 50 programs, and let you reboot 6 times in the process", I was up and running (Well, after another reboot for updates that is.) - All went well for a day or so, no problems, starting up went fine for a few times. Then, suddenly, without anything from my part, the system refused to boot. It went through the BIOS fine, and showed the little blinking underscore (So, nothing in Windows yet, all BIOS) - Then it restarted, went through the BIOS, showed it's pretty underscore, rebooted, etc. etc. No error given anywhere during the process. Pressing F12 (Windows bootloader screen) did nothing, it'd just reboot before something could do anything.



I installed Ubuntu on the thing (Which, for the record, works absolutely brilliant.) - And allowed it to overwrite the MBR with GRUB. GRUB can boot into Ubuntu no-problem, and has detected Vista in the correct partition (SDA2) - It allowed me to choose it from it's list, after which the system instantly rebooted to BIOS->GRUB, and back to the selection list.



Does anyone know what is keeping me from booting into Vista (Yes, I have a recovery dics, but I'd rather skip the humongous number of reboots, and the probable loss of Ubuntu.)



Thank you very much in advance!

 

If its not already obvious you could have used a vista install disc or WinRE disc to do a boot repair. You could have also made sure the BIOS was still detecting the hard disk and the order was correct.



I guess you figured out that the harddrive still works since you installed noobuntu on it. Even though that was a tremendous waste of time on your part, if all you want to do is fix Vista.



I really dont even know that i should offer you the amount of help i already have, seeing as this is most likely just more Nix Fanboy drivel with all the potshots at Vista and touting of Noobuntu in your post.



This is VISTAforums.com. Not ubuntu.com, not iwishicouldusedebianbutimlamesoiuseubuntu.com, VISTAforums.com.



Leave your retardation at the door.

 

Well thank you very much. The next time people come to ubuntuforums saying they checked the system with Vista and it worked fine, I'll tell them to stick with Vista and frak off, because it's obvious nobody is allowed to use more then one OS. If you could have READ, you'd have seen I had a problem with Vista, hence, I go to the VISTA forums - Have a problem with that?



The reason for my installation of Ubuntu is because I wanted it, and the only places where I named it was in order to show that everything is fine hardware-wise. Like I said, GRUB detects everything fine, Ubuntu works fine on the harddisk, and al of the other hardware works with no problems.



As I also said in my post which you read, yes, I can probably use the recovery discs I have, but they are meant to put the entire system back to default, and will therefor quite probably erase a lot of data, and cost me quite some time. Because I can access the partition via Ubuntu, I was wondering if there was any file I should remake, change or whatnot, so that I can fix this without having to do the whole recovery stuff.

 

came with Windows Vista SP1 preinstalled (Beforehand, let me just say I normally use Linux, the only reason I want to keep this operating system is because there MIGHT be some programs that don't have native replacements, or run in wine that I may need at university - Without that,, I wouldn't even bother with Windows, apologies to Microsoft.)



After the usual "Hey there, you bought an Acer, let us preinstall about 50 programs, and let you reboot 6 times in the process", I was up and running (Well, after another reboot for updates that is.) -



I installed Ubuntu on the thing (Which, for the record, works absolutely brilliant.) -



[/quote]



Here, with 40% of the actual useable information in your post removed, we are left with 60% ubuntu gloating/vista bashing.





Use a WinRE disc and try a boot repair. Although now that Grub is there and the windows boot loader is gone, you will be lucky if it works. But you can try it



http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/



Surely your precious ubuntu can burn an ISO.

 

Thank you for the link. I'll try and see if I can do anything with that. Yes, I can burn an ISO, thank you for asking.



Ow, and on the subject, thank you for proving me again that the Linux community is much more helpful, and I know you'll consider this as another sentence that says "I love Linux and Vista sucks", or whatever meaning you may interpret it with, but the only fanboying I see here is from you.



Ow, and as a matter of fact, GRUB won't kill it. GRUB can work with Windows no problem, and as I said in the post (Which was one of the reasons I mentioned that Ubuntu ran fine), the problem lies not with the initial MBR, but with the loading of the OS after that.

 

People are less likely to be inclined to help you if you come into community and right off the bat bash the product they use.





anyway, hopefully the RE disc will work for you. Although it will probably wipe GRUB and load BOOTMGR

 

Ow, that doesn't matter, both can load both OSes without any trouble.



Rebooting now to see if it works, thank you.

 

That cd fixed the problem without removing GRUB. I can now boot into both Ubuntu and Vista without any problems, thank you very much.

THe problem was caused by Acer. When I burned their recovery disc, it removed the hidden partition that the recovery data was on. Vista's partition was automatically shifted to the first sectors, so it's bootloader couldn't find itself. It just needed a pointer on where it actually was.

 

To answer your initial question (in case this happens again) ...



I also multiboot machines with several different Windows OSs and Linux OSs on the same box. While GRUB generally does a good job of detecting and modifying the menu.lst file to add the proper entries for Windows OSs, it's not always correct.



Make sure your menu.lst has rootnoverify in it instead of root. Also, make sure the relative partition number for the Windows OS is correct. If either of those is missing or wrong, you will get exactly what you saw -- immediate reboot into GRUB with no Windows launch.