Install Linux Mint And Windows 7
I have a Gateway laptop that Linux Mint was installed on. Booting off the Windows 7 iso disc I have and installing it, I was met after the first restart with a GRUB error. Since then, it's been a wild ride of /FixMBR, /RebuildBCD, etc., but nothing seemsto help.
I'll try to remember as many of the details as possible.After the GRUB error, the first thing that was recommended to me by someone was to use GParted and wipe the disk. So I booted off a flashdrive I made with Tuxboot and GParted and deleted every partition and formatted the hard drive as NTFS. ReinstallingWindows again gave me winload.exe errors and BCD errors.
I can get into the Recovery command mode, and I've tried many Bootsect.exe and Bootrec.exe commands. Using diskpart, it seems that the Windows install used 8GBs or so of the sole partition, but didn'tmake a 100MB System Reserved partition, which I'm not sure why. Once the first phase of the Windows install completed and it had to restart itself to continue, I got an error saying to run Auto Repair, so I guess the Windows installation process not completingmight be the cause.So basically, after trying the usual Bootsect and Bootrec commands, I'm stuck at a partial Windows install and continuing to get BCD, Bootmgr, Ntldr errors. Windows didn't create the 100MB partition yet. I can reformat the drive again and start from scratch,but there's either a command I'm missing or steps that I'm doing out of order. If someone could please guide me through the process I need, I'd be forever grateful.
I've found many articles on all different kinds of similar problems, but none seem to fix myparticular boot problems. Thanks in advance for any assistance. Are you using the Custom instillation setting when installing Windows 7? Also, make sure you pick the option for Formatting the hard drive for installation. This will help make sure the hard drive is formatted for the OS.Check this link out:that does not work, you may want to test your hard drive and make sure it is not corrupted. I would suspect hard drive failure if this does not work.Yes, using the Custom option. I've tried using the Windows installation formatting option, I've tried formatting the hard drive ahead of time with GParted.nothing seems to work.Does the bootloader have to be fixed before trying to install Windows?
I've been told that since Linux was installed, or if the bootloader is messed up for some other reason, that doing a reformat or fresh install of Windows doesn't clear it. If that's thecase then maybe Windows isn't completing installation because of it?When I do the 'bootrec /FixMBR' and 'bootrec /FixBoot', they complete successfully. /RebuildBCD is the only one that fails, and when I try to boot off the hard drive I get aBootBCD error- it says An error occured while attempting to read the boot configuration data.So maybe it's the BCD that's the main cause of the problems? I get a BCD error after trying to reinstall Windows and the /RebuildBCD command is the only one that doesn't work:(. Have you tried using the system repair utilities that should be on the installation disc? I am sure you have tried this, just want to eliminate it.Yes, I've used the repair options.
Especially Startup Repair.I seem to have made some progress. After trying the diskpart command 'clean all', I tried the Gateway recovery discs one more time and after the first restart I got the 'no boot device found' error. After a hard reset I actually got into Windows. After theGateway software updated itself, I tried a couple restarts and I can only get into Windows everyother time. One restart I'll get the no-boot-devices-found error, the next restart I'll get into Windows.So now that I can get into Windows 50% of the time, is there any way to get it back to 100%??
I went to Disk Management and there's no recovery or system partitions. Like my functioning laptop has about 7 partitions, but this one I'm working on only hasthe C: and no system/recovery partitions. That can't be normal can it? Anything that I can try now that I'm in Windows that'll get me back to a successful boot 100% of the time? None, unfortunately.
I had to settle for the 50% boot-up success rate and return the laptop to the owner. She didn't want to take up anymore of my time and said she keeps the laptop asleep all the time anyways, so she won't even see the problem.All I can really say is that the diskpart command clean all seemed to be what got me past that initial wall. After using that command and then trying the restore discs again, I was able to get into Windows, albeit only half the time, but still progress.From there, given more time, who knows what else I could've tried that might've worked. The BIOS update perhaps. If there was one.
Install Linux Mint And Windows 7 Free
If that wouldn't have worked, I probably would've just spent $30 on a new hard drive.