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I have a dualboot Win 7 and 14.04 Ubuntu on 2 separate drives. I don't really know how GRUB works behind the scenes but I installed GRUB, so my Win7 masterboot is gone.. Now I am having some issues with launching my Ubuntu so I wanted to do a clean install, but I am wondering what will happen to the Windows 7 install.

After I reinstall Ubuntu and GRUB, will GRUB recognize the Windows 7 install (even though it has been modified by GRUB?) and will I be able to get into the same state as I am in now? Or will doing a fresh install mess up the dualboot?

I suppose I could reinstall win7 and do a fresh install of both, but this would save some hassle..

Not really sure if I have grub2 though (might be 1.9 or smthn)

Thanks a bunch :)

Jakub
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  • If you have two separate drives, generally best to keep Windows boot loader in Windows drive and grub2's boot loader in Ubuntu drive. Grub2 will find Windows and add it to grub menu if Windows is bootable. Grub only boots working Windows and occasionally you may want to directly boot it to fix it. But only the Something Else install option gives you a choice on which drive to install grub. All auto options install grub to drive seen as sda.http://askubuntu.com/questions/274371/install-on-second-hard-drive-with-startup-boot-option Older version, but Something Else still same process. – oldfred Oct 16 '16 at 17:56

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Yea if you didn't hardcode chainloading,then it is able to check all OS'es again.grub-mkconfig could done after install.Master boot record contains several assembler commands to load outside code, which ends by JMP one to execute it(i mean it's something out of 'jump' bundle JNZ JNE or so).So you can just save first sector ,say with dd,put it to NASM's NDISASM,put there new sector too,compare both assembler blocks, and tell us "what happens".

Alex Neudatchin
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