So quite awhile ago, I installed Kubuntu 10.04 on my desktop, already running Windows 7. Anyone who has done a dual boot with Linux before already knows that this overwrites the default Windows bootloader with either the LILO or GRUB bootloader. It is not a problem and works fine.
However, a few days ago I used the "Try & Decide" feature of Acronis True Image Home when I was installing Company of Heroes patches. This feature is similar to virtual machine snapshots, if you know how those work. Basically you take a snapshot and then you can roll back to that point of time or commit the changes made.
Well apparently it relies on its own bootloader to handle the delete or commit at boot time. So it seemed to basically overwrite the GRUB bootloader on my machine. Rather than try to fix that, I just deleted all the Linux partitions. I hadn't even booted to Kubuntu in forever anyway.
So I come home from work today and my stepson tells me that the computer isn't working. I go check it out and basically it gets stuck at a "grub rescue>" prompt after POST, and states that "the partition is not found".
I have no idea how GRUB's rescue mode works, so I didn't bother with it. Besides, the GRUB files all went bye-bye when I removed the Linux partitions. So I decided to boot to my Windows 7 disc. I know Microsoft did away from the traditional repair process that existed in Windows XP and Windows 2003 starting with Vista, but I know they have a startup repair utility in the repair tools that are present now. However, that stupid utility just ran some tests and basically told me it could boot into the Windows OS fine, which was not true because I got the same grub rescue prompt after trying to reboot.
I decided to give my Acronis backup a shot and restored the image for my C: partition, the system reserved partition (part of Windows 7, I'm guessing the boot portion), and the MBR. It seems to overwrite whatever is present and took about 40 minutes. Afterwards I rebooted but had the same issue as before. I ran the Windows 7 repair again, and this time it said it found a problem with the boot process and fixed it. Except it didn't fix it, same problem as before.
So I look up on the Internet on how to fix the Windows bootloader, and you have to go to the command line and run "bootrec /fixmbr" and then "bootrec /fixboot". This actually did work. There was no sign of the GRUB or Acronis bootloader after performing these steps and Windows booted right up.
So it's good to know that my Acronis backups are working and also that it is possible to fix a non-bootable, but otherwise intact Windows environment. What's stupid is that Microsoft's own automatic boot repair tool seems to be useless.
