Ubuntu Installation :: 11.4 - Grub2 Kills Windows Boot Sector
Apr 30, 2011
Been away from linux for a few years thaught id come back and give it a try again. I have Win7 on sda and installed 11.4 Ubuntu on sdb. Grub2 Over wrote the boot sector for windows so windows wouldnt show in the boot menu. I repaired that after some research and then tried it again with 10.4 LTS version of Ubuntu. Same thing. Now I've fixed windows boot sector a second time and im ready for round 3. Any hints on how to get grub2 to boot both OS's? Ubuntu 10.4 is still on sdb I think I should just need to re-install grub2 But how to do it without Killing the windows boot sector?
i initilally installed ubuntu 9.10 then installed windows 7 ,then i recovered grub2 using livecd as told in the post [URL] i did "sudo update-grub" and got windows 7 menu entry but when i select that entry windows 7 does not load but the grub2 is reloaded again. i cant boot to windows 7.
Windows 7 have 100 mb partition "System Reserved" the grub2 points to that partition but still windows 7 not loaded.
sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x3c3a81f5
I went through so many post but I haven't found the proper answer yet hope you have an Idea1. Grub2 saves only Linux OS as last selected no Windows OS2.It is possible to boot into a cdrom (drive)?
I have a asus eeepc 1101ha. With Karmic,it would boot into w7 without problems.I installed Lucid on another partition,and after that the w7 grub entry would leave me with a blinking cursor in the left top corner, and hang.
I booted with the w7 dvd, ran bootrec.exe to restore mbr and bootmgr, and the booted into w7 to confirm. It was working. Then I booted with the live dvd, mounted the lucid partition, and installed grub. Now choosing the w7 entry would ask for the boot media, and pressing any key would bring me back to the grub menu. Lucid and karmic boot without problems.
Installing grub from karmic now gave the same error. Running update-grub didn't change anything.As I had to use w7, I booted again from the dvd, and restored again mbr and bootmgr. Booted into w7, used it, then once again to the live cd, to reinstall grub, and once again the w7 entry in grub makes grub ask for the boot media.I've attached my boot info script.Ah, I also played with the bootable flag for the /dev/sda1 partition, but it didn't change anything.
This is automaticly genarated after installed ubuntu 10.10. It shows black screen with a flashing cursor after press enter. Grub 0.97 also does this with:
ok so sounds like everyone elses issue that i`ve seen on here but i had it all working properly until i booted into ubuntu and updated grub somehow and when it told me to reboot all i got was a grub rescue error.
Now i got ubuntu 10.10 installed to try and fix the grub 2 error but now cant get it to boot windows from the menu.
I recently installed Ubuntu 10.04 on my dual boot system and noticed that my boot options were changed. I typically have Windows XP as the default OS. Here are the steps that worked for me to get Windows XP as the default boot using Grub2.During my initial Window XP install I had partitioned my hard drive into 3 partitions:
Code: Partition 1: NTFS format (Windows XP installation) in Linux it is called /dev/sda1 Partition 2: NTFS format (Data for Windows XP) in Linux is is called /dev/sda5
I just installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on an external hard drive (USB connected) and I can no longer boot my Windows XP(SP3) from my internal C Drive. Grub gives me the list of boot choices, but when I choose the C drive, I just get these error messages:
GEOM ERROR For Realtek RTL8139(X)/8130/810X PCI fast ethernet controller v2.13 (020326) Client MAC ADDR: 00 13 D3 07 FD F5 GUID: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF PXE-E53: No boot filename received PXE-NOF: Exiting PXE ROM
(The version of Grub is 1.98-lubuntu5). I don't have a Windows System CD to boot from, but is there something I can do from within Ubuntu itself?
I have a dell Inspiron 5150. I had perfect windows XP home installation, and decided to dual boot with Ubunutu 10.04. I copied the whole C:/ to external drive, installed ubuntu, installed windows, repaired Grub2, but now, Grub2 looks something like this.
[URL](where loading into Windows corrupts the MBR). None of the solutions in the bug thread work for me, however--I'm on a Dell system (so it's not HP tools) and I'm not running PC Angel or any similar service (I checked). I assume it is related to the Dell recovery partition, though my old laptop from Dell didn't have this problem even though it also had a recovery partition.
However, before I had partitioned and set up Ubuntu on my new laptop, I installed Wubi (for transferring over the files from my old laptop because I didn't have time to do a full install and deal with problems like this one). Wubi worked fine using the Windows Boot Loader. I understand that WBL isn't capable of loading Linux on its own, which is why I was wondering if it was possible to have GRUB installed on a separate boot partition (not the MBR) and loaded from Windows Boot Loader. All of the information I could find on it didn't work with Windows 7--but again, I know Wubi was capable of doing it. how to set this configuration up?
I've currently got a dual-boot setup with Vista and 10.10 (using grub2 on MBR).I'm about to install Windows 7 and would like for a change to use the Windows bootloader. I currently have a separate /boot partition and believe I can install grub2 there so that I can chainload it using EasyBCD.
I'd like to do this from my running system as I don't have a spare USB drive right now. confirm the command I should use baring in mind the separate /boot.If I have to wait and do it from the Live CD - is the command to use any different? FYI here is my current layout:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/vg_root-root 37735960 15719388 20099644 44% / none 1023876 316 1023560 1% /dev
I have two hard drives - (1) 80GB (2) 500GB: the 1st HD has 3 partitions (in that order) - Windows 7, Ubuntu 10.10 & Swap. the 2nd HD is for storage only, and has 2 partitions.
I did the following - I installed Windows 7 on the first partition of the 1st HD, it booted just fine. Then I installed Ubuntu 10.10 on the second partition of the 1st HD.
Windows 7 shows in the GRUB menu alongside with Ubuntu. Ubuntu boots just fine, but when I select Windows it simply restarts the computer and the GRUB menu shows again.
RESULTS.txt of Boot Info Script:
Code: Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #3 for (,msdos3)/boot/grub.
I have Lucid installed on a computer. I added a second drive, installed Windows 7. Windows 7 boots fine if it is the only drive connected, or it is selected as the boot drive in the BIOS. I booted into Lucid, ran 'sudo update-grub' and it found the Windows 7 install on the second disk. When I try to use that Grub entry to boot Windows 7, I get this error screen:
Code:
Windows Boot Manager Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:
1. Insert your Windows installation disk and restart your computer. 2. Choose your language settings, and then click "Next." 3. Click "Repair your computer."
If you do not have this disk, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.
File: BootBCD Status: 0xc0000225 Info: An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data.
I seem to remember in the Grub 1.x days there was a map command that would 'swap' the drives so Windows would think it was the boot drive, but the Grub2 autogenerated command doesn't have anything like that.how to get Grub2 to boot Windows 7?
I've just installed the 64 bit edition of 9.10 on my workstation. My raid drivers worked without any custom installation, which is very impressive! I am however having a problem installing grub2. I boot to the live CD, run the install process, resize and partition my free space as an ext4 primary partition with mount point /. Everything installs except grub, so I'm always booting in to windows.This seems to be a bit off as I've never had this occur with dual booting before.
yestoday,after I upgrade,unable to boot windows xp. if I use grub ,windows xp can boot up.but now I want to use grub2, boot info script's results.txt is at below.
Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010
Boot Info Summary: => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #6 for /boot/grub. sda1: File system: vfat Boot sector type: Fat16 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
I'm running 9.10 off of a 4 GiB CF card. I keep running into space issues with updates, so I purchased an 8 GiB replacement card. I've cloned the 4 GiB card to a .IMG file using DD.I've then copied the 4 GiB image back to the 8 GiB card using the Ubuntu startup disk creator program. Once done, I'm able to properly boot off of the new 8 GiB clone.Unfortunately, the clone ends up with 3.67 GiB of unallocated space at the end *see attached). I tried deleting the "extended" partition that the swap is located at after booting from a Live CD and the system was unable to boot after this. I was thinking that I would delete the swap entirely and create a swap file after I merged the existing partitions, but I was unable to do this.
best way to do this (e.g. get one large 8 GiB partition with my old image on it)? I still have the original untouched 4 GiB card and also have an external CF drive if I need to redo the cloning. I've also used Clonezilla before, so perhaps there's a way to do this that allow me to grow the image as it's being cloned.
I currently have XP installed on a NetBook (Samsung NC10), and would like to run Fedora on it. I'm currently looking at putting Fedora onto a flash memory card to test it works OK on the hardware, before installing it to the hard disk. The problem I've got is that the boot sector is occupied by WDE software (TrueCrypt). Will this pose a problem for dual-booting XP with Fedora, or will GRUB move the boot loader in the usual way?
I have a rather puzzling error. I recently purchased an usb external hard drive with the intent of installing Ubuntu on it. I have had great success with installing various linux flavors on usb thumb drives but I need a little larger space for engineering applications that I use. Anyway, I removed my laptop's internal hard drive and installed ubuntu 9.10 on a recently formated external hard drive. Everything worked fine at first. Upon restarting I get an error that says "no boot sector" and it asks to hit either f1 to retry. When I hit retry, Grub loads most of the time. Occasionally it does not work. Is Grub just not installing correctly? I searched for this error but I found nothing that directly applied.
My old Dell Inspiron 9300's CD Rom is no longer working. I've written the files to my 8GB USB device, and attempted to boot from it. Whenever I try, I get this "No boot sector on USB device". I'm also using Mac OS X to make the USB drive.
I recently upgraded to 10.04, all went well. Except now Windows 7 does not load. It shows up on the grub menu, but when selected just hangs with blinking cursor?
i wiped my entire hard drive that had xp as its only OS. I freshly installed a Windows 7 ultimate and everything went perfectly. I then decided to install 10.4. I split the partitions correctly (i had experience doing this already with my laptop, which has xp/10.4). Ubuntu 10.4 install went flawlessly, except for one thing. Now when i boot up the pc, it goes straight into 10.4. I have tried holding shift during the start up to force the boot menu, and it just shows the Ubuntu 10.4 OS as choices. Any clue what i could do to make Win7 appear in the boot menu?
I just installed squeeze from a usb key. Installation went flawlessly but now I need the usb key to boot. Nothing happens if I let the bios boot from the HD or if I force it to do so. When it boot up from the usb key, the HD is read and the boot up sequence continues. Grub seems to be installed in /boot/grub. I imagine that I have to copy the usb key boot sector to the HD but how?
I am a complete noob at this and I need a hand. I was about to throw my computer out of the window when I decided to throw the windows out of the computer so to speak. So, I downloaded Ubuntu 10.10 and tried to install. I had a grub rescue after the installation (file system unknown), which I have seen discussed here. Being the noob that I am I decided to try 10.04 because it said it had full support. With this install I get a similar error during installation: grub cannot be installed in boot sector.
So, basically there is an issue with grub and the boot sector. I checked in my BIOS options to see if there was an option that prevented the writing of a boot sector or something, but I have not been able something like that. So, I am wondering if it is possible that Ubuntu does not really erase/format the selected disks or something, leaving any difficulty there.
Does anybody know? Or better yet: what exactly do I need to do a manual grub install?
I just installed CrunchBang Linux and it's great! But I can't boot into windows anymore. I'm sure it didn't delete my Windows partition-it's mounted. My linux partition is /dev/sda1 Windows is /dev/sda2
Code:
sudo update-grub Found linux image: .... Found initrd image: .... Found linux image: .... Found initrd image: .... done
how I can get Windows to reappear? I've had bad luck with Grub in the past and I don't want to fight it on my own...
I have a toshiba notebook with Windows XP and Ubuntu studio. I removed Ubuntu partitions with the idea to install classic Ubuntu, but... grub don't recognize Windows to boot. I formatted the hard disk as slave from another PC. I installed Windows again trying to delete the grub, but, it is already there. I am trying to repair grub from Windows with: FIXBOOT, FIXMBR, fdisk /mbr from MS DOS, but that is not working.
Any suggestions: - To delete the hard disk complete and start again everything. (deleting grub also) or - To repair boot sector for Windows
I installed Fedora 15 on a primary partition and expected the install to create a partition boot sector, but it didn't. Did I do something wrong or is this not supported?
I had ubuntu studio installed ( for the record I hated it and every ubuntu flavor I have ever used. ) After backing off all the stuff from my home dir I started to install testing from a dvd. ( Is there a net install for testing? I couldn't find it) Don't ask me how it happened but some times I would have two grub graphical boot menus. One would chain to the other. I suspect that happened from one of the very friendly updates ubuntu did. Well when I tried to install testing I got a red screen telling me that grub wouldn't install so I tried lilo. Well it wouldn't install either. Back in the old days when I was a slackware guy installing from a stack of floppies I had a trick to wipe out any boot loaders or other stuff that gave me a problem. I would dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<drive info such as hda with no partition number> .
This would write zeros over the drive and it would look like a new drive. So I did this trick. But still no joy ( this is a clue, dd was also thinking that the beginning of the drive was after the boot sector.). I suspected that the installer wasn't doing it's job right. So I got a PCLinuxOs disk and started that installer. The PCLinuOS installer has a cutesy visual bar that shows the partitions. Well sure enough the boot sector showed as blank. This was what the Debian installer had done. It left the boot sector blank and tried to install the boot loader right after it. This won't work. Now I consider when some version of Linux falls on it's face and another version does it right that the version that fell on it's face has a problem.
One might even call it a bug. But I don't know what to do about it. I don't think the problem is with grub or the installer itself. I think how the drive was looked at was faulty. That's why dd didn't blankout the boot sector. So what do I do to help get the Deb people to fix this? The more I think about it the more I think the problem is with udev ( what a surprise) I think this because I suspect dd looks to the info set out by udev to find the beginning of the drive.
I tried to help my friend install Ubuntu 10.04 side-by-side with Windows XP on his Acer Aspire One netbook.Unfortunately, the installation process came to a standstill and it quit due to "unexpected errors". The second time I started the installation, I realized that the option for installing side by side was gone and that I could not mount the C: partition on Ubuntu. The error message is listed below:====================BEGIN ERROR MESSAGE======================Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 12: Failed to read last sector (299982847): Invalid argument
HINTS: Either the volume is a RAID/LDM but it wasn't setup yet, or it was not setup correctly (e.g. by not using mdadm --build ...), or a wrong device is tried to be mounted,
when i try to boot the 11.04 64-bit alternate.iso i get the following message, after it says that isolinux blabla is loaded: EDD: Error 8000 reading sector 2855 and when i remove the cd it says: gfx.c32: not a COM32R imageand then there is a grub-shell.
