Disk Wiped, but Grub keeps loading?!?..

Simian

Simian

Simian

Soldato
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Hi Guys..

This weekend I spent having a play with Vista and Win7 to see if my main rig (really old spec which I won't go into!!) will run them so I can see if 7 is really better than Vista (don't want to debate at the mo!!)..

Now my system had Ubuntu installed on it onto an old 20Gb ATA drive with 200Gb ATA (bit flakey) and a 250Gb SATA drives as storage for Music/Video etc...

Now I backed up everything externally and using GParted wiped the two big drives, then rebooted with the Vista Disk in the DVD drive and formatted the 20Gb for install, only to find out that 20Gb is a little tight!.. :rolleyes:

But everything worked nicely it booted no problems..

So I decided to do a re-install on the 250Gb SATA drive (as the 200Gb isn't to be trusted to run an OS).. I partitioned the drive in half so I could also install Win7 later and it went fine...

Now remember the Drives were wiped and formatted before I started fettling with Vista!..

Once the install had finnished I rebooted (after installing some drivers) and for some reason the Boot screen said 'Loading Grub' and then 'Grub Error 22' and thats as far as it got!!..

I tried re-ordering the HDD priority in the BIOS (puttung the 20Gb last and the 250Gb first) but it wouldn't boot into Vista!..

Needless to say I rebooted (in disgust) with the Ubuntu disk in the DVD and re-installed that with no problems and its currently running (and booting) on the 125Gb partition that Vista wouldn't without a hi-cup!!.. :o

Anyone know what I might have done wrong??.. apart from trying to install Vista!!.. :D

Cheers
Sim :)
 
Yep did all that!.. even booted up with an old Win98 Floppy disk and tried!...

Every time I rebooted into Vista (must have re-installed it 4 times!!) it tried to load Grub
 
I'm guessing here, but did you install Grub to the Master Boot Record? If so, deleting the partitions on the disk won't remove Grub, you need to replace the MBR.
 
Would have thought completely wiping and formatting all the drives on the system would have wiped the MBR and Vista would have re-written it when Installing?!?!...
 
Simian said:
Would have thought completely wiping and formatting all the drives on the system would have wiped the MBR and Vista would have re-written it when Installing?!?!...
Click to expand...

Vista should have re-written it, yep.
Try fixmbr or boot the vista disc, select repair, then your windows install and click on startup repair, it should rewrite the mbr if it finds a problem.
 
Tried that too!... strangly at the window that say's 'Select your Operating System' the window was blank!.. I clicked 'Next' and Repair.. it said it had, Rebooted for me!...

'Loading Grub 1.5'

'Grub Error 22'

:(
 
I had pretty much the same problem at the weekend, and I fixed it yesterday. I dual booted Windows XP and Ubuntu, removed the Ubuntu partition, and the Grub bootloader gave me the same error. I couldn't fix the problem with fixboot or fixmbr either.

What I decided to do was create a new NTFS partition using GParted, and start a new XP installation, installing it on that partition, so that it would replace the Grub bootloader with the default XP one. After it checked the drive for errors, just before it copies the install files to the hard drive, it said that it had fixed some problem, and needed to reboot, so I rebooted and it went straight into Windows XP. All I had to do was delete the new NTFS partition I created, and resize my C partition, and my laptop was how it had been before Ubuntu was installed.

I don't know if that's any help, seeing as you're using Vista. Maybe trying something similar would work :confused: It doesn't seem an ideal way of fixing the problem, but it worked for me.
 
Yep, use DBAN. Choose the quick erase option so that it just blanks the drive(s) in one pass, and you're good to go.
 
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