I'm dual booting Win7 & Ubuntu 10.04 on a Gateway NV78 series laptop, and while on the Windows side, the Gateway Update Manager asks to update my BIOS. If I allow it to do so, will it mess up Grub? For bonus points: how could I fix Grub if the BIOS updates does damage it?
View 6 RepliesI have dual-boot XP and Karmic.
I want to practice restoring the grub, before any emergency occurs
I plan to use the following thread: Grub/XP/Vista Bootloader - Ubuntu Forums
I would be grateful if someone could tell me an easy way to damage the grub. For example, re-installing XP always damages the grub, but I'm sure there are quicker ways to do the same thing
.
How to change boot loader from Grub to syslinux on running Lenny without damage the system?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI'm thinking of buying a new motherboard for my desktop. I've chosen a model and I've read some reviews on it. A couple of the reviews talk about BIOS updating/flashing and stuff like that. As a moderate hardware guy (I've built computers, but only know the basics of hardware and how they work together) running Linux, should I worry about this. I've never updated/flashed my current mobo's BIOS
So are all these reviews specific to Windows users? I've never had much driver issues in Linux (other than ATI graphics cards), nor have I had to update BIOS.
I was installing Ubuntu 9.04 64bit server from the CD on a machine that I normally run ESXi on. I wanted to test disk speed on a direct install vs. the install in ESXi, so I installed a 4th hard disk, shutdown ESXi, and installed Ubuntu directly on the new disk (4th Bios disk - SCSI:3 or sdd). When I tried to boot from this disk, nothing happened. I rebooted from the ESXi install disk (SCSI:2 or sdc), all was fine. Playing around, I finally found that to boot the ubuntu install, i had to boot from SCSI:0 - Grub had installed there, even though I never indicated that disk for anything during the install. It would be much better if Grub ASKED where it should be install, rather than assuming.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI'm having some issues getting Ubuntu to boot. I've installed it a bunch of times before, but dual booting and not. Right now though, I'm having issues installing it along with Windows 7, on separate hard drives. Here's my current configuration:
60GB SSD with windows 7
500GB HDD, NTFS, windows 7 data
I bought a 1TB HDD that I want Ubuntu on, but I only want Ubuntu to use 100 GB. I want the other 900GB for Windows 7. So, I put in the Ubuntu CD, chose to edit the partitions manually in the 1TB HDD, created a 100GB ext4 primary partition for linux and a 2GB swap partition, leaving the other 900GB unallocated. Ubuntu seemed to install fine, said it succeeded, and asked me to reboot. When I did, however, my computer boots straight into Windows (no GRUB screen at all). I've tried changing the boot priority to all three of my installed drives from BIOS and tried putting GRUB on both my SSD and 1TB HDD.
When I boot, I can grub into linux, but when I try to boot windows it doesn't work.
It shows a screen where it lists the commands:
However, if I change the harddrive boot order in bios I can easily get back into windows by selecting that harddrive for the first slot.
However, I don't want to do this everytime I want to switch operating systems.
I am planning to use EFI BIOS in my system with GRUB as the boot loader. Is it possible to use Grub loader with EFI BIOS?? If yes, whether Grub needs to be EFI compliant to use with EFI BIOS??
View 1 Replies View RelatedMy problem, GRUB loader appears when it normally did not and Ubuntu fails to boot. My story, I installed ubuntu on a HP Touchsmart laptop a month ago because I was having troubles with Windows and... well I just wanted to install ubuntu. All goes well until a week ago when my sound was permanently muted through a hardware switch and ubuntu was not detecting it. I tried hitting the button on my laptop but nothing worked. Soo... I tried resetting my BIOS in hopes that it would fix it. I set the bios to its defaults and booted. This is where it got weird. the GRUB loader appeared when it normally did not and upon booting, a black screen with flashing cursor would show up and then... nothing. I changed the bios settings back to what they were and still nothing.
I have removed the silent boot from the GRUB boot line and can see whats going on... a little, the last thing it shows is "Running /scripts/init-bottom ... done." annnd nothing else. When booting in recovery mode it stops after 30 or so seconds on...
Code:
ACPI: Power Button [PWRB]
input: Power Button as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXPWRBN:00/input/inp
and just ends on that line. the previous line shows closing the Lid as a button.
I have tried booting into a live USB (as the laptop has no cd drive) and everything works fine.
how the BIOS would be related to GRUB/booting..
Is it possible that grub can load usb driver because BIOS of my computer is 10 or more years older. Currently in grub if I run
root (<press tab>
I get
fd0 hd0
meaning so far floppy & hard disk can be accessed. I am using ubuntu 8.04 .
I just upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 (using Update Manager) in an attempt to get to 10.04. Installation and upgrade seemed to go OK until reboot. Now I only get a black screen - I don't see the grub menu, I don't even see any way to access the BIOS menu- not even a blinking cursor. I can hear it start and I can see the numlocks key go on. Ctrl-Alt-PrtScrn-B does not reboot (nor does Ctrl-Alt-Backspace- but I didn't expect that would) Surprisingly Ctrl-Alt-Del does (or at least it sounds like it does) reboot the system. I do have a NVIDIA cards and after reading around I suspect that this is likely the problem but I have no idea what to do now..
Here's what I've attempted:
I figured since I wanted to get to 10.04 anyway and this was so troublesome I could just go do a fresh install with a Live CD or USB to 10.04. However, even with a live CD or USB I still just get a blank screen.
Continually holding down F2 (and other function keys to try to access Bios)
Holding down Shift while booting
Esc while booting
Moving the monitor to the VGA port (as opposed to the NVIDIA card).
Other information...
Previously I had tried to upgrade to 9.10, but ran into problems with it not recognizing my RAID, so I just found it easier to go back to 9.04. (So although this is likely a graphics problem I guess the possibility is that now it doesn't even see my boot drive- although- if that was the case, I'd assume I wouldn't have the same problems from the CD or USB boot.) My ultimate goal is to get this to 10.04, if I could do it with an upgrade instead of a fresh install I'd prefer that, but at this point just getting back to a functioning computer would be ideal. I see many options in other posts for how to get back once you can access a command line- but since I can't even see that, I'm not sure what to do now.
Is there some workaround by changing grub settings other than rewiring the hard disks or changing in bios..
1. my bios is getting reset (low battery)
2. my hard disks are sata and ide, so the ide one is loaded as hd1 by default, cudn't find any way to change that..
I have Debian Jessie 8.0 amd-64 installed. It is a dual boot system with Widnows 8.1 alongside. Both the systems work fine with a few glitches coming at times on jessie. But I assume it should get stabilised with time.
Problem is:
The usb keyboard is no longer detected until the GRUB stage crosses.
* This implies I am unable to press F2 to enter into BIOS
* I am unable to chose Windows 8.1 by using arrow key on the keyboard.
When the default system (first in the grub list), in this case Debian is selected after time runs out then the keyboard comes back to life and works properly thereafter.
So far I have tried the possible solution given at [URL] .... but it did not work.
Some Information
================
$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:Debian
Description:Debian GNU/Linux testing (jessie)
Release:testing
Codename:jessie
$ uname -r
3.13-1-amd64
I installed Puppy Linux on a partition on an older 2000-era computer. The other partition had Windows ME, which crashed and burned recently. Lately, the computer has started to open GRUB very slowly. It is also slow to boot Puppy Linux from there. I reinstalled GRUB, to no avail. I decided that the problem was probably a slow BIOS, but I'm not sure. Does anyone know of another possible problem, or of a good boot-disk BIOS diagnostic tool? I tried using a couple of the tools on the Ultimate Boot Disk, but they all got hung up, displaying: - InitDisk as the last line in the sequence.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI'm having a problem with Wubi on my netbook, and while I could fix it easily (though probably only temporarily) by reinstalling, I've been using it since January and many of the files are files I cannot afford to lose. I'm dual booting with Windows XP, but when I choose Ubuntu 9.10 from the menu at startup, it takes me straight to Grub with the following message:
Quote:
GNU GRUB version 1.97~beta4 [minimal BASH - like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists possible device/file completions.] sh:grub>
I've had this problem once before, but I was able to fix it with the wubildr patch. Both instances of this problem have occurred after updates, though it hasn't happened after every update, just the two so far.I've also tried several of the command-line suggestions that have fixed this problem for other users, but I've been getting "unknown filesystem" when I attempt them. If anyone has any idea how to fix this without losing the files I have on my current install,
Both my netbook and this machine needs an update (according to the update manager) Well 2 days ago, I let it update the netbook. Bad mistake. Long story short; it installed a new kernel, and monkeyed with GRUB (v1.5) and it wouldn't boot. It's that new grub thing, with the long cryptic numbers/letters string, instead of the more normal hd0, hd1 thing. I had no clue on how to restore it.
How can I back up GRUB next time, let it update, then restore grub back the way it's suppose to work? I tried backing up the menu.lst file, but that didn't work. I backed up, and restored it, and the netbook still wouldn't boot. Got the very same error message. I had to do a partimage to bring back the old image of it. Also Grub-install will not work at all, from systemrescueCD.
Is there some sort of up-to-date tutorial on Grub? I've had more problems with Grub than anything dealing with linux. Especially since anything happens to it, your virtually screwed.
I've been a Windows users since waaaay back when (ahh...Windows for Workgroups 3.1). I've tried Linux in the past (Mandrake many years ago), but didn't feel it was quite ready to be a Windows substitute for me.A couple of weeks ago, I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu (10.04) and installed it in a dual boot setup with Windows XPSP3. All seemed to be running well, until it came time to install updates in the Update Manager. First an update for GRUB, which promptly killed GRUB and left me with "Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported" message and a GRUB prompt. After booting up the Windows XP install CD, I was able to rewrite the MBR and get back into Windows.
I deleted the Ubuntu installation and reinstalled it, making sure I didn't allow it to update GRUB after finishing up. The other updates listed installed fine and I was able to dual boot with ease.Another round of updates were listed yesterday when I booted up in Ubuntu, I made sure not to include the GRUB update, downloaded and installed them, rebooted and was faced with "Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported" again. Argh. Once again I had to pull out the Windows CD and run FIXMBR to resolve the boot problem.I'll admit to being tempted to just go back to Windows completely (while not perfect, atleast I can get it to boot after updates 99.9% of the time) and forget the idea of running Linux if I'm going to be faced with having to reinstall the OS everytime because something killed the boot loader.
After I updated my system, grub shows about 2 extra options on the boot menu. They seem to be different kernel versions. How do I clean up the menu and uninstall the older kernel versions?
View 6 Replies View RelatedI'm remote from my system and so have to wait 2-3 days before I can get access directly, but I've noticed that when the kernel updates automatically (or forced by me), the next reboot stops at the grub page awaiting confirmation of the kernel I want to boot. grub.conf doesnt seem significantly different from that of fedora (my previos distro for this machine) and even has the default lines and times spec'd, so I can't see what's holding it up. Any ideas how I can prevent this so I can have my system auto-updating the kernel AND safe to reboot remotely?
View 1 Replies View RelatedJust installed Ubuntu a month ago (installed within windows), and for the 2nd time it has gotten stuck in grub upon restart after doing an automatic update. Last time, I reinstalled from the CD, but I can't do that every time. Learning how to start up from grub would probably be worth learning so I don't have to use the CD. But fixing the problem is most important. It makes me wonder if it was a mistake to install Ubuntu from within Windows (does this mean I have "wubu"?). I did find a webpage on booting Ubuntu from grub, but I could not get the kernel to load, regardless of if I used the instructions for wubu or not.
View 3 Replies View Relatedhow can I remove old kernel updates? Should I delete not usable kernel files from /boot ?
grub.conf was manual changed, here new config:
#vi /boot/grub/grub.conf
title CentOS (2.6.18-164.2.1.el5.028stab066.10)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-164.2.1.el5.028stab066.10 ro root=LABEL=/ acpi=off noapic nodmraid
[code]....
I'm currently running Karmic 9.10 in dual boot with Windows 2000. My computer has automatically updated and installed kernels 2.6.31-17, -19 and -20 (They show up in Synaptic as installed).
However, the newest kernel choice in my GRUB menu is 2.6.31-16-generic (followed by -15 and -14). These all start without any errors.
Question: Why haven't the newer updates shown up in GRUB for booting purposes?
Could it be a question that I didn't answer correctly some time back about accepting or not accepting an update or change in GRUB?
How can this be changed? The new kernels do not show up in Start-Up Manager either.
How can I uninstall grub? I have have dual boot between Gentoo and Ubuntu and I want to use the grub, that is on Gentoo partition, as its my main system. I would not care about it as it takes almost no space, but Ubuntu automatically restores its own bootscreen after updates. This is annoying... How to get rid of it?
View 5 Replies View RelatedAfter applying the latest round of updates last night, I turned on my laptop this AM (ATI X1300 Mobility graphics running the default drivers), selected the latest kernel in GRUB, and waited to log in....only problem is that instead of seeing a normal loading screen (Blue with Fedora icon filling in), I instead get a black screen mostly covered in multicolored rectangles. I don't believe there was a graphics driver update, so I'm rather confused as to what went wrong/how to procede. I can still boot using a previous kernel.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have had Fedora 14 running well on my Dell Latitude XT. All was good until I created an NTFS partition and attempted to install windows XP on it. The installation failed, then when the computer boots i get:
"Error Loading Operating System"
I have attempted the following:
1) FedoraLive from USB then :
Code:
[root@localhost liveuser]# grub-install /dev/sda
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
/dev/mapper/../dm-0 does not have any corresponding BIOS drive.
2) I tried:
Code:
# grub-install --recheck /dev/sda
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
/dev/mapper/../dm-0 does not have any corresponding BIOS drive.
Today it happened again: After an apparently trivial update Grub (Grub2) enters rescue mode the next time booting, not displaying any useful help whatsoever at that point. (Remember that at boot time no manual or help pages are available.) I don't know what went wrong, but ... The harddisk or partition in question is now no longer a bootable partition.
I don't want to use much time trying to sort out things, so unless someone may direct me to at better procedure, I am going to save whatever can be saved from the hd and then reinstall debian (in this case: Sqeeze) from scratch. Nothing else has in my experience ever worked before.
I'm kinda new to Linux. My problem is that a new Fedora O/S entry is added onto grub everytime I receive an update on Fedora (I think). Eg:
Fedora 15 15.40.0-4 ...
Fedora 15 15.40.0-3 ...
Fedora 15 15.38.0-0 ...
Windows 7
How do I stop this? Ideally I'll only have two entries, Fedora 15 and Windows 7 where Windows is set as the default primary o/s to boot up. The current method I use is to fiddle around with that grub file and set default to entry 3, which used to be Windows 7 but is now a Fedora (which means Fedora is now set to default boot up).
I dual-boot my machine and I want it to default to boot into windows so that whenever I restart the machine remotely from my home it will be able to get back into Windows (instead of Ubuntu).
The problem is that every time Ubuntu upgrades the kernel, I have to reset the default boot item of grub back to windows. This is because the grub menu loader uses positions i.e. 6 for default OS to boot. And when Ubuntu installs a new kernel it changes that order.
I am looking for a way to configure grub to remember its default boot item under kernel updates.
Possible Duplicate:Make grub keep its default boot under kernel updates.I have just installed Linux with my windows 7 pre-installed and i got it working fine. Since i use windows 7 more than linux, i would like to have "Windows 7" option on the top of "Linux" option.
"When i have turn on my computer, the first thing i see is an Option asking me whether i want to use windows 7 or Linux and there's a countdown timer below it which is 10seconds countdown and if i don't select it on time, it will automatically select the first choice which at the moment i've got Linux pre-set as my first choice."
i am working with an old system that uses a BIOS meant for embedded systems. According to my coworkers this thing boot some version of debian about two years ago. currently I have used there old image and a new one I made of the latest Debian stable build. both images fail to get passed grub.
to be clear the BIOS simply replies "loading grub" takes ten minutes and then crashes.
has anyone ever had trouble with grub crashing systems? this problem seems odd since is did boot with this two years ago and i still have that image.