Problem booting Windows after failed installation Ubuntu 12.04 alongside Windows 7
- by Tassos
I tried to install in my laptop Ubuntu 12.04 so that I can dual-boot with Windows 7. I made some mistakes during this process and I didn't manage to install Ubuntu.
But my real problem now is that I'm afraid that I also destroyed the installation of Windows 7. Your help would be precious for me.
Here are the details of what I did:
1) I followed these instructions to dual boot Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 7:
http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2012/05/17/how-to-dual-boot-ubuntu-12-04-and-windows-7/
The only difference from what is described above, is that in my case the device names where:
/dev/mapper/isw_fdjdhbadc_Volume0*
instead of:
/dev/sda*
Note that I had created a bootable USB stick to do that.
2) The installation proceeded normally, but in the end I got a fatal error because the grub-install failed.
3) Then, after googling this problem, I runned ubuntu from the USB stick and run this command:
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/home/ubuntu/temp /dev/mapper/isw_fdjdhbadc_Volume0p5
(/isw_fdjdhbadc_Volume0p5 was the partition that I had made for /boot)
but this command also failed.
4) Then, I did something stupid (I think): I run the above command as:
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/home/ubuntu/temp /dev/mapper/isw_fdjdhbadc_Volume0
namely I tried to install grub in the device isw_fdjdhbadc_Volume0 instead of the boot partition isw_fdjdhbadc_Volume0p5
The above command did not fail and was executed ok.
5) After that, I tried to boot my laptop, but it seemed that I had no operation system. Not even windows were detected.
6) I thought that I should uninstall grub from isw_fdjdhbadc_Volume0. So following some online instructions that I found,
I booted again Ubuntu from the USB stick and run the following command (this was stupid since the instructions were for a totally different case than mine):
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mapper/isw_fdjdhbadc_Volume0 bs=446 count=1
Afte that, I was still unable to boot Windows.
I realize that I deleted something that I shouldn't, but I'm hope that this is not crucial and I can recover somehow.
When I boot Ubuntu from the USB, I can see that the partition with Windows is still there, with all the directories, Windows files, my data etc.
So, my question is:
Is there a way to undo the mistakes that I desribed above and recover Windows 7?
This is my major question. After solving that, I'd also like to know what I did wrong with the installation of Ubuntu.
Thanks in advance for you valuable help!
