vista doesn't boot from orig. dvd (want to fix mbr)

[tommason]

Hi,
I have had vista installed for a while on my computer and recently decided to try dual booting ubuntu. Stupidly, after some time trying to get ubuntu running, I gave up and deleted the linux partition. This has left me with 'Grub' (the ubuntu linux boot loader) trying to load and not letting me run vista as it changes the mbr.

What i wanted to do was run recovery console from the original windows installation dvd by booting from that disk. However, it just won't boot and I have no options to repair!!! I'm still getting a grub 22 error

Any help would be much appreciated, as I'm a bit of a noob when dealing with the more complex tinkering with windows and mbrs etc.

Cheers!

Tom

[jackvdbuk]

erm... have you changed the BIOS to boot from a disc first?

[tommason]

erm... have you changed the BIOS to boot from a disc first?

yes, yes i have.

[peterb]

The problem lies with the DVD or Optical drive if you have changed the bios settings correctly. The BIOS won't look for the hard drive mbr unless it can't find the DVD image. If you put the Ubuntu disk in, does it boot from that? (If so a short term solution would be to reload Ubuntu which would re-install Grub and at least allow you to boot back into Vista (although why you would want to.. ))

[tommason]

One of the reasons that i deleted the ubuntu partition was that it wasn't allowing me to boot into vista. It also wasn't allowing me to boot into ubuntu leaving me OSless
Ideally, yes, I'd just have ubuntu as my only os, but at this moment any will do

The ubuntu live CD works fine, but the vista installation CD does nothing, after :
verifying dmi pool data......
i get:
press any key to boot from cd......
i press a key and get a black screen and then the computer resets and starts afresh.....

[peterb]

In that case I would suggest it is a problem with the Vista DVD.

[tommason]

hmmm, will an xp disk do any good?

[tommason]

no, it did do a little more than the vista one, however....the drive started whirring, but it then just restarted.

[peterb]

This might help but I have no personal experience of it. Googling around shows there are some peculiarities about the Vista MBR and disk signatures, but as I am not a Vista user..

Hope this helps. Still not sure why your drive isn't reading the install disk though.

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

[tommason]

cheers! I'll look into it......

[tommason]

it looks like easybcd needs to be installed while you can get access to your os, unless anyone else has any experience?
anybody have any other ideas?

[aidanjt]

Why didn't you just fix grub to chainload the Vista partition when you had Ubuntu installed?..

[tommason]

if i knew what you meant i probably would've done What I'd intended as a day maximum has turned into almost 4 days and has wiped out my vista install AND my new Ubuntu install. As soon as the ubuntu install started getting complicated i ducked out as I'm not really into too much computer trickery