GRUB Errors on Windows Dual Boot
Posted by Nessa | Posted in annoyances,linux,ubuntu,windows | Posted on November 30, 2007
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I don’t want to admit that I still have PC’s that dual boot Windows XP and Vista, but given the occasional problems I have after Ubuntu and Fedora updates I’m not ready to give them up yet. Some time in the middle of the night last night my laptop, which used to dual boot Ubuntu and Vista (before I deleted the Ubuntu partition), rebooted and left me with a ginormous GRUB loader error:
GRUB Loading stage 1.5
GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 15
The issue is that the boot loader probably went apeshit and doesn’t know what to do. Since Windows is the MBR nazi, it’s best to use Windows to fix it.
Luckily with all the luck I’ve had with Vista I still had the install CD and was able to recover quickly. For those of you at home, if you don’t have the original install CD you need to create a boot disk and slide it in <insert giggle here>. From the CD, when the menu comes up hit ‘R’ for recovery console which will bring you into the Windows command line. If you’re using the boot disk, you should already be there.
From the command line type ‘fixmbr‘ (or fdisk /mbr for versions < XP) and then you should be able to successfully boot into Windows XP (or Linux).
If you’re still running Linux on dual boot, another option is to run the recovery from the Ubuntu CD. However, this can take a lot of time and if you don’t know what you’re doing you may end up deleting your OS.
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I think its worse to admit that you have a computer with Windows or Vista on it at all…
At least I didn’t admit that I have syphilis. oh wait…damn.
There’s nothing wrong with booting XP. I run XP64 at home, because I’m not willing to pay Cedega so that I can play the games I already paid for under linux, at reduced performance. Vista on the other hand… well, you might as well have syphilis. ;P
And if you play games you might as well have syphilis as well ;)
And for the record, yeah I have a windows box setup next to my linux machine on my desk at work, this is only so I can walk people through Outlook/OE setups yadda yadda… As soon as I make a screen shot gallery I wont need it anymore.
no one in our support dept. uses outlook to help customers anymore – they use online walkthroughs:
http://products.secureserver.net/email/email_outlook.htm
Our support department was forced to use windows desktops to support linux boxen, just so we can connect to the exchange server with outlook. (There are so many things in that sentence that made me shudder). Then an incompetent employee got a virus on his computer, compromising a very critical part of the infrastructure, so I told my manager I was running Linux in the middle of the scandal, and he hasn’t said a word since :P.