How to boot a win 7 hard drive that was in Ubuntu system?

[Liam Proven]

On 8 April 2017 at 13:27, Xen <list at xenhideout.nl> wrote:
> I really don't know what you are on about. The BCD is not the same as the
> MBR.

Agreed.

> The BCD is sitting on the "System" partition (usually /dev/sda1, so to
> speak) and can only be remade with Microsoft tools or likewise, I don't
> think there is any Linux tool that can do it.

Not that I know of, no.

I use a freeware tool called EasyBCD.

http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

This enabled me to upgrade Win7 to Win10 on my old machine -- the
Windows upgrade fails if you're using GRUB, and I know of no way to
uninstall GRUB. You normally need to use a Windows recovery medium to
replace the boot sector.

But if Windows still boots from the GRUB menu, EasyBCD can put the
Windows bootloader back. Then I could run the upgrade, then reinstall
GRUB afterwards using an Ubuntu LiveUSB.

> You say gparted can restore a Microsoft MBR.

Not that I know if it can't, no.

> I don't know why you would
> trust non-Microsoft tools to do that.

I might out of desperation.

There used to be a very useful CD image from MS, called the Windows 7
Recovery Disk.

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-create-a-windows-7-system-repair-disc-2626301

It would not install Windows, but it booted enough of a live Windows
environment to fix errors on a hard disk install -- run CHKDSK, clean
out temp files, fix boot loaders, etc.

It was freeware and very useful... so MS killed it.

Images are still out there but of course not from MS so some people
wouldn't trust them.

> And I can't test right now because:
>
> $ sudo gparted
> Segmentation fault (core dumped)

That is scary. Do you have partitioning errors?


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