Restoring Win7 on failed Kubuntu 12.04

[Frank616]

I bought an Acer S3 on sale. It came with Win7 Home. I installed Kubuntu 12.04, and it works. However the machine has a weak wifi module, and I want to return it. I used the Win7 system restore option, and it ran. However, when the machine rebooted, it comes up in grub rescue with the message:

error: no such partition

How do I restore the boot partition now that I cannot boot either OS? It will boot from USB, and I have GParted.

I should mention that I installed Kubuntu 12.04 on this machine twice as I goofed the first time. There are two installs on Kubuntu 12.04 on this machine -- the failed one, and the one that worked.

Frank.

[james147]

You need to restore the windows mbr record, the easiest way is with a windows recovery cd or you could try this.

[Frank616]

James:

That appears to be working. I used option 1 as syslinux was part of the install on the USB stick that I booted from. I opened Rekonq, went to the link, cut and pasted the command in a terminal window, and it ran. I rebooted, and Win7 came back up. It now appears to be re-installing, and, as Windows does, rebooting every few minutes. I think that is what got messed up the first time. I did the factory restore, which cleared the back of the hard drive of anything Linux, but then it needed to reboot in preparation for the next step. Of course, with the GRUB booloader, Windows never got control again, and I was stuck.

Anyway, a valuable lesson here, and I will not only bookmark that page, but copy it into my notes on my main laptop.

Thanks for the link.

Frank.

[SteveRiley]

I wouldn't think you need to bother reinstalling Windows. The license agreement that ships with pre-installed Windows doesn't require that purchasers return damaged hardware with Windows still installed.

[Frank616]

Steve:

The weak wifi module is a known failing of the model, not this particular unit. I thought it would be 'good enough' as I only use it in the house, but unless I am pretty much sitting on the router, it kept dropping off the network. I did restore Win7. Syslinux did the job in a split second. The machine has gone back, and has been traded for an Asus X202E Win8 machine with touchscreen.

The Asus netbook is a much better built machine than the Acer, smaller (11.6" which is what I wanted to begin with), the wifi module works great -- and it was $50 less!. I've run into some snags trying to dual boot on Win8, but I know that the machine does run Ubuntu 64 bit with no problem once the "Secure Boot" is disabled in the BIOS. I've come across two very recent examples of that on the Internet. One is here, and the other is here. In both cases, however, the people that successfully installed Ubuntu replaced the whole drive, and put in an SSD. I'm heading out to buy one of those in a few minutes.

Frank.

[pauly]

James:

That appears to be working. I used option 1 as syslinux was part of the install on the USB stick that I booted from. I opened Rekonq, went to the link, cut and pasted the command in a terminal window, and it ran. I rebooted, and Win7 came back up. It now appears to be re-installing, and, as Windows does, rebooting every few minutes. I think that is what got messed up the first time. I did the factory restore, which cleared the back of the hard drive of anything Linux, but then it needed to reboot in preparation for the next step. Of course, with the GRUB booloader, Windows never got control again, and I was stuck.

Anyway, a valuable lesson here, and I will not only bookmark that page, but copy it into my notes on my main laptop.

Thanks for the link.

Frank.

I always use easy bcd to restore windows mbr if I know I am removing linux.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/.../EasyBCD.shtml

of course in your situation you would have had to do that before starting the system restore.