Linux – Need to boot Windows 7 from Grub rescue command prompt

grublinuxrescuewindows

I booted my computer today and found the Grub rescue command prompt. I have been given this computer and it has Linux and windows 7 on it, but I have only ever used the windows section. I have no idea about Linux at all, and was startled by this "Grub" thing.

It won't let me do anything in the command prompt, and i can't boot windows. I have a netbook, so there's no CD drive on the computer. I need a way to get into windows 7 from this command prompt. With a little bit of searching (on my phone) I found a couple things to enter that are supposed to let me into windows. I tried this:

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
makeactive
boot

That was the first sequence of things that didn't give me an error. But when I got to typing "boot" it told me the Bootmgr cannot be found…? I have no idea what this means. All I want to do is to be able to boot windows again, I don't care how, I just want access. Like I said, my computer doesn't have a CD drive, so I can't use a disk. Is there a way to fix this through the Grub command prompt? Any answers would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Best Answer

1) Using rescue disk, boot ubuntu or any other unix flavour..

2) Give fdisk -l command to see on which partition windows is installed.

3) Mount the /boot partition of linux in /media directory.

4) Give chroot /media to change ur root to /media.

5) Open the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file and edit it. Add the following lines if not present or if present modify it.

menuentry "Windows" --class windows --class os {
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod ntfs
    set root='(hd0,msdos2)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 14445AFA445ADE54
    chainloader +1
}

I am supposing that windows is present in /dev/sda2 and 14445AFA445ADE54 is the UUID of ur partition /dev/sda2`..You have to replace it with the UUID of ur windows partition.You can find that by

Go to /dev/disk/by-uuid directory.

Do ls -l.

You will output like this ..

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  10 Aug  1 20:16 14445AFA445ADE54 -> ../../sda2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  10 Aug  1 20:16 322C5AEB2C5AAA1D -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  10 Aug  1 20:16 7d41ed63-16cb-493c-91ce-02f7b3146fb6 -> ../../sda5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  10 Aug  1 20:16 88e4dc0b-c986-4e1f-84a2-c09731555dec -> ../../sda7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  10 Aug  1 20:16 c8ad3ea8-5467-4f22-803d-9584d32d8a79 -> ../../sda6

By matching the partition, you can find its corresponding UUID.

Reboot the pc. Now it shud work.

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