First, don't freak out: windows is safe, you really just need to boot into it. I don't know if something changed with Windows 7, at least before booting windows involved running the windows bootloader from grub.
So, GRUB (if that's what you're using, check) is (usually) installed in the MBR and has some configuration files in another partition (frequently /boot).
You need to add an entry to grub.conf
(or menu.lst
— both names have been seen out there), which should be in /boot/grub/
.
You need to add an entry:
title Windows 7
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
Where the biggest deal is finding if (hd0,0)
should be something else. In your case, it seems to be (hd0,1)
(the first NTFS partition that is big enough to hold Windows, and which is the second partition in that partition table).
You can add the entry, if it does not work, you just need to go there and change it again.
(Also, this is for GRUB 1, I don't know whether GRUB 2 has another syntax. I wonder if this is an example in GRUB2.)
If you have two computers, you can even try this in real-time using the GRUB commandline (hit c
at the GRUB prompt). You can also edit menu entries in GRUB (it doesn't save changes, but boots with the new entry -- hit e
to edit the current entry).
An explanation of the entry:
- Set the menu entry name (heh, fancy stuff!)
- "point" GRUB to the windows partition
- mark that partition as "active" (should not be needed, but doesn't hurt)
- boot whatever code is in that partition boot record