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So I'm a big fat idiot.

I installed Ubuntu 11.04 on my school's laptop, and here's come the time that I have to turn it back in. I wrote GRUB to the Master Boot Record, thinking it wasn't going to be permanent.

So, fast forward to yesterday. I decided to hell with this, and popped in my Windows 7 CD, deleted the whole partition, formatted to NTFS, and installed Windows 7 on it. I'm surfing the web and my computer overheats [totally typical]

I boot up, and get this:

Try (hd0,0): FAT32: No GRLDR
Try (hd0,1): invalid or null
Try (hd0,2): invalid or null
Try (hd0,3): invalid or null
Try (hd1,0): NTFS5: No grldr
Try (hd1,1): invalid or null
Try (hd1,2): invalid or null
Try (hd1,3): invalid or null

Cannot find GRLDR.
Press space bar to hold the screen, any other key to boot previous MBR...
Timeout: 5 

The timeout part just counts down to 0 from 5.

I need to turn in this thing before tomorrow, can someone help me out?

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    @TheX Even it might be questionable to act such it's a relevant question. Other might benefit from an answer too.
    – N.N.
    Nov 9, 2011 at 7:57
  • Coming clean about what you did might be a good idea.
    – RolandiXor
    Nov 10, 2011 at 4:50

3 Answers 3

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GRLDR is a component of GRUB4DOS, which is a special version of GRUB that is most likely not what the Linux installation was using. Instead, a more likely source of the problem is that your Windows 7 CD contains an illegal version of Windows 7 using a SLIC activation trick. This trick works by overwriting a memory area which makes Windows think it's an OEM install that comes installed on a computer from the manufacturer. These activation applications often use GRUB4DOS to load the relevant fake SLIC strings into memory.

Now the question is why this failed. Either the crack on the CD is bad and will always cause this error, or it was a one-off fluke. You could try just reinstalling Windows from the CD, which should work, but the problem might come back.

You could try the solution in DeoxNa's link, which should get Windows to boot again. But be warned that if you do this and your install CD is indeed an illegal version, Windows will likely warn that it is "not activated" within a few days.

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I found the following tutorial googling: http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-39251-booting-grldr. The page itself points to a tutorial on how to fix this problem in windows vista, but I believe the same commands should apply under 7. Double check this though, seriously. The commands basically "repare" the MBR, or replace the existing one with a new windows-made one.

Hope it helps.

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  • The tutorial page applies to both Vista and 7, so no worries. :)
    – DeoxNa
    Nov 9, 2011 at 1:43
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If you don't have Ubuntu installed on the system, then try with Ubuntu live-CD firstly. insert the live CD boot from that try "try without changes" after go in file system of windows and find WUBILDR.* files on Windows 7. They were located on the ubuntu folder. copy -not move- the 3 files directly to c:\, and maybe it will work.

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