Tech Blog

I recently had an experience with a corrupt dual boot setup of Kubuntu 11.10 which led to me finding a solution for reinstalling Kubuntu 11.10 in a dual boot environment. If you are curious, read about it here: How to Reinstall Kubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot on Dual Boot System.

This is a temporary solution for bypassing the GRUB Rescue prompt to an uncorrupted installation of Windows where the Windows MBR (Master Boot Record) is intact, but Grub is setup as your primary boot loader. To load windows, you need:

1. Working computer with a blank CD.
2. CD IMAGE burning software. You can’t use regular CD burning software for this task, you must be able to burn images so they will load on boot. Great software that runs on Windows and is FREE is ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/
3. Image of Hiren’s Boot CD: http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

Hiren’s Boot CD will download in a zip file, which will need to be extracted. Burn the .iso image from the extracted folder for your live CD. In my case, the file was: “Hiren’s.BootCD.15.1.iso”.

Once you have completed burning your Boot CD image, restart your computer and boot to Hiren’s Boot CD

The first option on the list:
“Boot From Hard Drive (Windows Vista/7/2008 or Xp)”
or scroll down two pages and select:
“Boot Windows XP (NTLDR) from Hard Drive”
or if you are running Vista/Windows 7, select:
“Boot Windows Vista/7 (BOOTMGR) from Hard Drive”

If none of the three options above work for you, you can scroll up to page two and attempt to boot (I have not tested these options, but maybe worth a try):
“Boot HDD 1 MBR”
“Boot HDD 2 MBR”
“Boot HDD 3 MBR”

If you are unable to boot to Windows with any of these methods, your Windows MBR (Master Boot Record) could be corrupt or missing.

As always, if anyone has any suggestions, feedback or advice, please comment. If this post has helped you out, please spread the word by posting a backlink from your site or blog. You can also share on facebook, linkedin, or any other social networking/bookmarking site.