Advice please regarding my dual boot system

Hi,
I wasn't sure how to make a clearer subject title but here's my situation. I have a dell 15 laptop running windows 7 and Zorin 9. I only use windows maybe 3-4 times a year (but I do occasionally need it). Everything has worked great for about a year and half. Last week I needed to get into windows. The battery was quite low (and I was away from my power cord), so I shut the computer off and left the room. Well, I didn't think about the windows updates which started automatically. Long story short---the battery ran down and the laptop shut down in the middle of the update---now I can't boot into windows from grub, nothing happens. Worse, I can't get online on Zorin (though everything else works fine in linux). I believe this is because the button for the wireless card in windows got turned off. This is a little more than just a theory as several times since I've had the notebook, I haven't been able to get online (wireless) in Zorin and the only thing that works is to boot windows and turn on the wireless card. This works. I'm not sure how it gets turned off but it does. The same thing would happen in my last dell notebook too.

Anyway, I do have a reinstallation CD from dell for windows 7. I don't suppose it it's possible to run it on the windows partition alone---is it? Is there any better option than just saving my zorin home folder, reinstall windows, then reinstall zorin? And, of course,then reinstall all my programs. Too bad as I have Photoshop (with several 3rd party plug-ins) and Illustrator running nicely in Linux. Of course, my preference would be to keep Linux as is and just run the Dell reinstallation dvd solely on the windows partition but is it possible? Any ideas?
Thanks for reading!
Blue

Hello Mr Blue (that was a great old song by the way). What I would do is to put the Dell Windows CD in and boot from it, but choose the repair option. If that doesn't work, Macrium Reflect Free makes an excellent Windows recovery disc. You would need to make it on a computer you can get online with, boot from it, and choose again to repair Windows. It will fix the MBR and you should be able to boot Windows after that.

If this doesn't solve it, and you get no further help here, I would go to sevenforums.com. An excellent forum for Windows 7.

Usually proprietary recovery CDs/DVDs are looking to wipe the entire drive clean. My advice to you would be to buy Acronis Home which allows you to create 'boot' media so you can run it from the live CD you create of Acronis - then select Zorin partitions that you need to backup - beware, I have never tried this in Zorin - I backed up Ultimate Edition 2.9 this way but never tried a reinstall. The free option is redobackup from redobackup.org but you don't have the flexibility of choice of partitions like you do with Acronis - before anything else I would backup all of your '/home' folder - ensuring all your hidden 'dot' files are showing before you do - if not showing, press Ctrl+ H.

Thank you---these are both helpful ideas! The reinstall disc from dell doesn't have the repair console---I think anyway. I will look into the Acronis ---I have their video cued up ready to go .

Yeah, great song by the Fleetwoods---we are ****** ourselves heheh. Well, good news in that I was able to finally open Win7---the bad news is that I'm not sure why I finally got in.
At first the updates were frozen and would download but eventually it started updating and completed---I restarted and everything seems back to normal! I think I got lucky .
One thing---I was right about the keyboard switch---windows offered to run the troubleshooter which frankly, has never helped much before---this time it said to check the hardware switch! So my little used win7 is fine and my Zorin is back online! So, I dodged a bullet. Not a deadly one---just an annoying one Thanks for your replies!

Glad you're back to normal. Windows does sometimes recover from its little tantrums.

Re:: Macrium, I have used it many times to rescue Windows. Typically, what happens is that I have a dual boot with Windows and Linux, then decide to delete the liinux partition. Which leaves me unable to boot into Windows. Macrium instantly fixes this and windows will then boot normally.

I also used it once to recover my original Windows 7 install on a hard drive that was failing. I had made an image of it, but stupid Windows could not find it (even though it was made in Windows). With Macrium, I was able to make it a virtual image, which Macrium could then load and put on a new drive.

I'm sure both Redoo and Acronis are both excellent choices as well.

In any case, you should make a rescue CD with one of them for future use (not that this will ever happen again, of course).

quote:Re "Macrium, I have used it many times to rescue Windows. Typically, what happens is that I have a dual boot with Windows and Linux, then decide to delete the liinux partition. Which leaves me unable to boot into Windows. Macrium instantly fixes this and windows will then boot normally.
I also used it once to recover my original Windows 7 install on a hard drive that was failing. I had made an image of it, but stupid Windows could not find it (even though it was made in Windows). With Macrium, I was able to make it a virtual image, which Macrium could then load and put on a new drive.
I'm sure both Redoo and Acronis are both excellent choices as well.
In any case, you should make a rescue CD with one of them for future use (not that this will ever happen again, of course)."

Yes, thank you, I will do that---I already could have used it a couple of times over the past few years. I appreciate the advice!

Whilst you have Windows 7 running (Professional I trust?) is to make a 'repair disc' - just enter repair disc n the search bar of the Windows 7 menu and it should come back as the first option.