How to restore Windows7 after loading Zorin6

Folks i know you've probably read about this issue and answered this question many times before, but please help again if you can or steer me in the right direction. I've looked at several topics -already but I didn't find anything with a similar situation as mine. So, here's my problem. I have an Acer laptop running windows 7 home premium (64 bit). The OS was pre-installed, so i don't have a disk. I was able to restore it several times before, so i didn't worry about making a back up disk. Anyway, everything was working fine when I loaded Zorin 6. However, when i rebooted, i expected to be prompted to select what OS i wanted to use. Well, all i got was a black screen with "error: no such partition...grub rescue>. Now I don't know where to go from here. I remember seeing a partition option during the zorin install, but i just accepted what was there, hoping that was some sort of an automatic default setting. I was able to get a windows 7 disk, but i can't even install that either. My question is; is there a way to just undo everything i did and just be able to restore my windows 7 again...and maybe start over from scratch? If you want to see what i'm talking about i'm willing to give you access to my laptop or send you screen shots.
P.S. I remember copying my entire C drive a couple of months ago. Could some sort of a restore or windows fix-it file be on there somewhere?

B

Hi B,

please see this guide, go to part 2:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2601

You can also use Gparted to see how your layout looks, it may be just a case of repairing the bootloader (GRUB).

Regards Wolfman

WM, do you think that he can give it a try to fix grub menu before starting partitioning again the disk?

I would suggest the following:

1) Use the live CD of Zorin to boot into Zorin.
2) Open terminal and write

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

You will get a table like the following:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 60280 484191232 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 60280 60802 4191233 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 60280 60802 4191232 82 Linux swap

Check to see what is the name of the partition that has the linux in it. In the above example is the "sda1".

Then do the following:

Code:

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

Code:

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda

Ofcourse replace "sda1" with your partition name.

Reboot and hopefully you will have the grub menu (without the win7 option) and you can boot into zorin without the live CD.
As soon as you boot, open terminal again and write

Code:

sudo update-grub

Reboot, and hopefully this time you will have the grub menu including the win7 option.