Vista reboots before login screen after installing Ubuntu

[colorplane]

I had Ubuntu 8.1 and Vista working well together today, but after a few reboots I tried Vista again and it booted past the loading animation to a black screen with a movable cursor. Now a few seconds after the cursor appears (and occasionally before it appears), the system reboots before displaying the Windows logo or login screen.

I have attempted all of the options in the Advanced Boot Options menu (F8) with no luck. Safe mode behaves in the same way, disabling automatic restart on failure does not show any blue screen or other error before restarting, and the remaining options do not solve the problem.

I also tried the System Recovery options, of course excluding a full reinstall. Startup repair is not able to fix the issue, System Restore is apparently not enabled, and chkdsk shows no errors on the disk.

According to the startup repair, it may be a driver issue. I have not installed any new hardware, but I suppose any number of things could go wrong working with a second OS.

The boot log shows that monitor.sys is the final driver loaded before the restart. I have tried both VGA and DVI monitor cables and there is no difference.

If there is anything else that I can do in the command prompt which might help I am open to suggestions. I had to use bootrec to fix the Vista boot record earlier but since the machine is booting most of the way, those commands have no effect on this issue.

I want to avoid reinstalling Vista, but have backed up the important data in case a new installation is inevitable. Is there any way to back up not only files but also the registry, Adobe CS3 product keys, and similar system files or will it not be possible to restore these after a reinstall? (from Ubuntu or the Recovery interface)

This is a Dell XPS with Vista Home and Ubuntu installed on a partition of a separate drive and a NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE graphics card with VGA and DVI outputs.

I'm out of ideas, I love Ubuntu but this is an office computer so Vista needs to work as well.

 

[linney]

Anything here?

Fix Vista after Ubuntu Install

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=398122

How to dual-boot Vista with Linux (Vista installed first) -- the step-by-step guide with screenshots

http://apcmag.com/how_to_dualboot_vista_with_linux_vista_installed_first.htm

http://www.google.com/search?q=remove+linux+from+vista&rls=com.microsoft:

315224 - How to Remove the Linux LILO Boot Manager

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315224&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

Maybe you could run Linux from a Virtual Machine in Vista?

Virtual PC 2007

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...3199-48a3-afa2-2dc0b40a73b6&displaylang=en&tm

 

[colorplane]

Thank you for the response, but it's not a boot problem - I already got all those straightened out and Vista was booting fine, just not loading properly.

Today I reinstalled Vista, first without reformatting the drive (the installer places the old files in a Windows.old directory) and after the installation, the same problem occurred again. This leads me to believe that there was something specifically wrong with the NTFS partition or perhaps a damaged critical file (which persisted in Windows.old) but since chkdsk /R did not find any errors I have no idea what it was.

Finally after a full format and reinstall I am able to use Vista again. After trying everything I could find, nothing worked and the full format and reinstall was the only remaining option.