Pc acting weird since dual-boot setup

Question

I just came to think of something I've noticed recently when rebooting my PC.

If I reboot my PC from within an OS, after installing software or something, it get's stuck on the absolute first screen where you have the option of going into BIOS.

This started happening a week ago or so and I've never had this issue before and I assume it came from dual-booting. I think it may have come up after Windows was put down in suspend-mode by accident (my girlfriend doesn't know swedish and though it said shut down) and it never resumed from that suspended mode and I had to repair Windows following that. (This is one of the primary reasons I prefer Ubuntu)

Anyway, so I have Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 installed. Ubuntu works fine but SINCE THAT STUPID BEHAVIOUR from Windows 7, neither OS can reboot successfully. I have to shut the PC down and then boot it up again manually, or else it gets stuck on that first screen.

Any ideas or theories? My theory may be completely wrong. I didn't think it was permanent the first time it happened because I thought it was related to Windows acting like a child but it stuck with me and it's bugging me a lot now actually.

Answer 1

Windows does not play nice with other operating systems. When you ran that repair it would have overwritten whatever bootloader you had on there, attempted to replace it with MBR, and with it as the only OS. It also would have deleted any partitioning and formatted your HDD with NTFS.

It's probably too late to go back. Windows discs delete everything to an extent where you'll need data recovery software to get that drive back as it was.

What has worked for me with Win7 and dual booting is to install Windows first. This will help with certain hardware like some wireless cards as well. Then you can shrink the NTFS partitions in Computer Management>Disc Management to make space for Linux. If you install Ubuntu second it should install GRUB which can then either boot you straight in or pass you to the Windows 7 loader. If the Windows install breaks for any reason, definitely back up before using a setup disc.