Re: recovering win7

[Jake Thomas]

Remember, it's all about passing the buck.

The BIOS goes to the MBR (in front of disk, outside any partition) first.

In a pure Windows system, the MBR code passes the buck to the VBR of the Windows loader partition. Grub can similarly pass the buck to the VBR of the Windows loader partition. So you may use either Microsoft MBR code or Grub MBR code to do so. Grub does it by chainloading the VBR. "chainloader +1 (hd0,2)" for example. (Using UUIDs is better.)

That VBR passes the buck further to, I believe, bootmgr.

Grub has a command (ntloader?) that allows you to even more directly load Windows. I think it bypasses Windows's VBR code.

So for whatever method you choose (all Microsoft code, Grub MBR --> Windows VBR, or Grub MBR --> bootmgr (or whatever)), restore the Microsoft pieces necessary.

Try this: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/20864-mbr-restore-windows-7-master-boot-record.html

Remember to keep straight whether you're restoring Microsoft code to the MBR, to a VBR,

or actual bootloader files (such as restoring bootmgr).

Jake