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I have a machine that was dual-booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04. I used the Disks program in Ubuntu to make a disk image of my windows partition which I saved on an external disk. I then reformatted the main drive and installed Ubuntu 12.10. I created a spare partition and restored that Windows disk image to that partition.

Is it possible to boot Windows? I have run boot-repair and Grub now gives me both Ubuntu and Windows options but when I select Windows I get only a black screen with blinking cursor. I ran Startup Repair from Windows Recovery (via USB stick) but still no luck, though it did find the Windows partition successfully. I also tried running lilo inside Ubuntu but still can't boot Windows. Any other ideas?

PS, I'm on a Netbook with no DVD drive so I can't just reinstall Windows though if that is my only option I can borrow an external DVD drive eventually.

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    You can install windows from USB superuser.com/questions/113153/…. As for saving recovered widndows installation, did you copy both windows partitions, 100MB boot partition and system partition?
    – week
    Nov 12, 2012 at 15:34
  • No, when I originally had installed Windows I followed a procedure (I forget where I saw it) that allowed me to delete the 100mb boot partition and integrate it with my main partition.
    – kd7iwp
    Nov 12, 2012 at 19:19
  • Then most likely you haven't got a bootable flag on that partition. It's a simple procedure, from windows recovery console run diskpart , select disk numberofdisk, select partition numberofpartition, active. Or from some linux usb distro run fdisk and command a.
    – week
    Nov 12, 2012 at 19:30
  • Thanks, tried that but now when I boot to Windows at the Grub loader I get 'A Disk read error occurred, press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart'
    – kd7iwp
    Nov 12, 2012 at 20:15
  • Now it's the time to restore mbr with windows recovery yourdrive:\boot\Bootsect.exe /NT60 All. If this won't help goto Answer from BroScience.
    – week
    Nov 12, 2012 at 20:54

1 Answer 1

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boot up to startup repair and go to the recovery console. from there rebuild bcd.

bootrec /RebuildBcd

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  • Good idea. Tried it but oddly enough bootrec reports "total identified Windows installations: 0". Even /scanos reports that. Yet when Startup Repair opens it sees the installation.
    – kd7iwp
    Nov 12, 2012 at 22:14

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