Bricked my mk6

So lost my mbr by getting rid of one of my linux installs and tried to use my recovery cds to fix windows and now it says I can't install Windows? Any ideas? I could boot into Windows at first using the super grub2 usb but now it loads into the can't install Windows screen

 

Use a live version of Linux.
Repartition the entire drive into one partition. NTFS with MBR
Then go back and try the windows install.
Windows does not recognize GPT partiton scheme of Linux.

 

hmm. it seems as many headaches could be avoided by just sticking to one operating system and running the other s inside vm s.
performance penalty is usually negligible at around 10-20%.
something like virtualbox or qubes?
here is a Guide to Qubes 3.2 on Toughbook 19 mk6

 

In my op onion..

Toughbooks all have very easily removable hard drive caddies. One OS per caddy for your own sanity.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a challenge for a true masochist.
A quad boot drive. Wifi must work in the first three.
No virtual machine cheating
1)Windows
2)Linux
3)OSX
4)MS-Dos

Bonus points if you can do it on a CF 52.

 

heh ... 4 different drives ... 4 caddies ... well , three more .
i could just manage that .
no ... wait ... three more drives are needed .

i used to do dual boot systems but every time i tried to get rid of the 'nix side , the machine would not boot .
i finally got smart and used two different drives , each with an OS ... and left one drive unplugged until i needed that OS .
i was going to make a data switch to select which drive without opening the case ...
we know how that works .

 

Nice try...
I did specify drive as in a single.

 

single drive ...
yes , i have done that but sans the OSX .
lessehere ...
it was a version of mint , a forensics bundle 'nix (think older style of parrot) and W7 and XP .
and now there are videos of how to recover/remove/change a multiboot machine .

 

Yeah I should buy a second caddy. I made alot of assumptions and I screwed myself for it. I had a thought that I might break my install so I had a Linux, and Windows usb ready as well as my backup external hdd and a ebay dvd drive. Unfortunately every one of those items hate me lol. I never realized when you back up a hard drive you can't access any of that info, also my stupid windows usb didn't work at all (should have tried it first) and my nifty 20 dollar dvd drive will not work on a 19 apparently.

Triple boot was working well till I tried to muck about in mint to try to add things. I have all these os's (well osx can suck it) built in vm I was just trying to get rid of the base windows 32 and go with the 64 to take advantage of my 16 gigs of ram

 

You need a Panasonic external usb DVD to boot on a CF19. Do a search here. It has been talked about many times.

Try RMPrepusb for creating bootable usb sticks. it works better than anything else I have tried.

I actually like OSX --to a point. I dislike the hardware restrictions.

I really want a Linux kernel with the real OSX gui desktop. That OS would have the style, looks, and ease of use of OSX with the hardware flexibility of Linux. I would never use Windows again.

I think I will go home and boot my Macbook.

 

I did find out about the dvd drive but not till after I realized I had a problem. I never noticed that it wouldn't boot from it. I'm using the yumi (linux pendrive) program now and it seems pretty slick. I used thier grub rescue tool to boot into the recovery portion of Windows and wiped the whole drive and started over. I'm trying to get my setup correct before I swap to the ssd

 

Bricked is a dead BIOS or something worse, not just broken mbr.
Shawn, Macbuntu?

 

I had the same happen to me years ago. You just have to rebuild the MBR.

 

One very important reason to not dual boot with Windows is it's tendency to re-boot when it feels like it and then auto-magically "fix" the MBR for you. (Sarcasm)
The units I had dual and triple booted were installed via Linux and Windows was last in the boot order with updates and wireless turned off.

If you MUST dual boot, install Windows first....do updates....turn off updates and then install the Linux package.

I dual boot with separate hdd's now.

 

Yeah I think I may stick with a os per hdd at this point. And I'm leaning more towards linux at this point.

Still haven't got windows to work. Getting windows setup could not configure windows to run on this computers hardware junk.

Gotta love the fact that my mint stick I'm working off of has everything working out of the box, wlan, wifi, ts all work perfectly no other effort needed

 

This is what you need and it's a fair price too http://m.ebay.com/itm/ORIGINAL-OEM-...3Ad707069a15b0abc10c6b021efffdfdc3%7Ciid%3A21

 

what he said ...
i messed with dual (and more) boots ... it was when i was vacillating between windows and linux mint .
(i had tried several versions of linux and had seen the writing on the wall)
two things finally happened :
i got tired of constantly (or at least spending a goodly amount of time) fixing broken crap in the boot/mbr
i acquired more laptops

i bit the bullet and bought a caddy .
the set-up of two individual drives made things easier and a lot less time consuming .
i even set up a regular laptop with two drives ... two screws and the drives could be swapped out .
today , i have machines (CF's and regular) that are dedicated to windows or mint .
the exception to this is my main forensics machine ... and the only reason for this is due to needing *stuff* from each OS at different times .
a fix for this is forthcoming ... i am putting together another desktop and then i will have two dedicated forensics machines .

for me , the eventualities have always been to , by virtue of the guided discovery , to steer away from multi-boot systems .
i liken it to dating two sisters ...
sooner or later , there is bound to be ... (ahem) ... *trouble* .
(insert *something* to do with booting into the wrong one here ----> X )

 

BarrMaley
Macbuntu looks good. I will try it and see.

 

I think I may give up on Windows for a minute, biggest pain I have dealt with so far lol. I have no clue why this beast isn't working, now I just have a black screen with a flashing prompt that does nothing. Tried installing both Windows 32 and 64 no go on either. Used my linux stick to change partitions and still no go. I'm thinking something may be broken in my recovery partition. I have 2 recovery disks for the mk6 can I just make iso's of them for the time being to use a USB?

 

yeah man ,
sometimes when things get really balled up , it is best to just put it down and walk away from it for a while .
(done that a lot in my life ... sometimes not near soon enough)
no shame in it .
there are points where the learning curve can be very steep ... kinda like riding a rollercoaster blindfolded .

@ shawn :
weren't you working on a boot-stick W7 ?

 

Yes I was..

I have W7 and W10 boot sticks. I don't have the Panasonic drivers perfected yet. They run good enough to test or repair a system.

I have been meaning to make a pair of usb sticks from the recovery dvds and see if they run.
Pretty sure someone tried putting them on one stick and it failed. Not sure about one stick per iso.

Maybe tonight I will try chasing this squirrel.

woof--woof

 

Yes someone did that a few years ago and it failed.

 

On the CF31mk2 disks, there is a checksum text file that has different contents for each disk. File has the same name.
So you can not copy both of them to a single folder. The recovery will then fail if the files don't match what is in the checksum text file.

I am trying to copy the recovery iso's to 2 usb sticks.

It won't work. It looks for the DVD and pops up an error when it can't find one.

 

I knew putting them on a stick sounded too easy lol. I have no clue why my win 7 iso isn't working, it's the same one I used for my vmware windows and that worked fine. I feel kinda pathetic that I can't reinstall windows l but I can make it run on Linux.

 

the upshot ...
we're stuck with dvds for the foreseeable future .