Ubuntu Installation :: Corrupt Master Boot Record Or Grub?
Nov 27, 2010
I think I managed to corrupt my master boot record, or have a very intractable problem with Grub.
I'm not sure how I did this, but my desktop will boot Ubuntu fine from a USB, but every time I try to install it, the install seems to go fine, but when I finish the install and the machine tries to boot the OS from it's hard drive, it does not work. The monitor does not get a signal and it just goes to sleep.
I tried posting here to resolve the problem before, tried everything on this thread: [URL]
But nothing worked.
I have even tried running the system from a USB, running a "shred" command for the hard drive and then reinstalling - my theory was that the shred command would destroy all the data on the hard drive anyway, and allow a "clean" install from whatever was corrupt on it, but no luck - when I installed Ubuntu on the hard drive, same problem.
I'm not clear where the problem lies now, I'm assuming there is something up with it's master boot record, but there are no partitions on it's hard drive and I started with a completely blank, unformatted drive.
Is there a way to re-install grub on the master boot record of a hard disk using a live cd?If so will i have to configure it?I'm trying to install a linux distro on my ao751h(with poulsbo ) but i after installing it i can't boot.I get an error 15 or a flashing underscore.I have already tried ubuntu,debian,mint and slackware(LILO isn't compatible with poulsbo).Also,does anybody experience problems with the ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 installers or is it only me?when i choose the language and keyboard settings the installation stop as it is and i get a crash report.
I have a Windows XP/Windows 7 dual boot system. My problem: [URL]. I follow these instructions to the letter, the live "CD" works fine - using a USB stick, I do not have a DVD drive, in- or external -. When I try to install Ubuntu from the live system, it corrupts my master boot record, I get the Error: No Such Device #####################. After I fixed this I tried to install Ubuntu under windows, using the same usb's wubi installer. The install completes, I reboot, and after selecting Ubuntu in my boot menu, I get that likewise well known error with wubildr.mbr [URL]
Rebuilding the USB stick doesn't make any difference, it behaves the same way. The wubi installer has the very annoying habit of downloading the iso during the installation procedure every time, I don't know why I can't just select the iso downloaded in the first step of the above link. This way I cannot check any md5 because I have no idea where it downloads the iso. What should I do to get Ubuntu working? Reinstalling any of my Windows systems is not an option, it is every time like gambling, I am using the same installation files, but sometimes the result is just not the same.
I have a dual boot computer. The WindowsXP "side" has been infected with a rootkit virus. So far UBUNTU has not been affected to my knowledge. I have not yet been able to remove the virus from the WindowsXP "side". I am thinking of deleting the NTFS partition and have the computer fully dedicated to UBUNTU.
Now for my question. Is there a possibility that the virus resides in the MBR and that I need to "rebuild" the MBR to actually remove the virus? Even more extreme, should I totally re-install UBUNTU in the name of safety and precaution.
Windows' Master Boot Record seems to be damaged on my dual-boot.Here are the details.
Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== => HP/Gateway is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda
I have a 1TB hard drive which is formatted with FAT32. Attempting to make a new partition I clicked the format drive button in Disc Utility. I chose Master Boot Record and something was written to the drive. So now I can't mount the drive and Disc Utility says that there aren't any partitions. I don't think this can be true because I had 200 GB of data on the drive and it would have taken longer to delete all that. At least I think...
I just installed SuSE 11.2 on top of where 11.1 used to be on my hard drive. Acronis Operating System Manager will let me boot into XP Pro but it tells me it cannot find SuSE in the master boot record. If I repair the master boot record in SuSE, XP Pro disappears. What do I do?
I've been using squeeze for a year or two now, on a PC dual booting with windows xp. Not long ago I thought that, as it's now become the stable release version, I'd do a fresh install, which I've been trying to do with the first two dvds. The installation proceeds as expected, up to and including setting grub. However, although grub saysthat it has detected windows xp, and I tell it to set up the dual boot, the computer on reboot goes straight into windows xp, with no on-scrteen option shown for choosing debian.
I have recently installed Debian alongside Vista on the same boot menu using the GRUB booting device. Only problem is, I couldn't boot Vista at all any more, so I removed my Debian installation from that drive. But the GRUB boot record persists, I don't have the Recovery disk to restore my old system, so I have to find a way to manually remove the GRUB track and put the old record in its place. I assume there was a copy made of it by the installation program, now my only problem is to find that file and copy the content back in place (at the address at the very beginning of the drive) all that by using Linux code, since that is all I have left. Being new to this game, I have no idea how to begin writing the right command for a job like this
A few days ago I installed my first Linux product, which is Debian 6.0, and I installed the GRUB booting device on my main boot record, as it was suggested that it was a harmless step to take. Unfortunately, some quirk in my system made GRUB believe that I had XP when in fact I have Vista, so the options I have now are to boot Debian or to boot XP which is not on my computer. In other words, I have to get rid of GRUB now, but I'm realizing that he's not such an easy customer to kick out. I have moved my Linux installation to another drive, but the old GRUB always stays in place, and my Vista is stuck there frozen for eternity. So after considering all kinds of possibilities, I have come to the conclusion that the easiest way to restore my original boot record would probably be to find its backup copy that I assume the installation program made, and to copy it back into the right address at the beginning of the disk. I don't have the Vista recovery CD, so I really have to do this manually. So now my questions are these: did the installation program make a copy of the boot track, and if so, where did he put it and under what name, and finally, what command can I use from within the Debian terminal, which is now my only tool left, to copy the content of thesaid file into the first 512 bytes of the hard drive? I know that would be a simple matter for any serious geek, I guess I must be a little rusty. Anybody feel up to it?
On my backup drive I can no longer see any files. According to Testdisk program the master file table (MFT) is bad. How do I restore or rebuild the MFT?
Im currently not an linux expert so I turn to this forum after several attempts to fix my issue with grub.
I had a dualboot single HD with both win7 and win8.1 when I decided to install debian wheezy from usb.
I deleted the win7 partition and installed debian there. The partition scheme is separate /home
After reboot I automatically get into the "Grub rescue mode" and now I´m stuck.
I tried the commands:
set prefix=(hd0,msdosX)/boot/grub/ Insmod normal
I have msdos1, msdos3, msdos5 and msdos6 but nothing is listing anything from the grub rescue mode.
I get the "UNKNOWN FILE SYSTEM" error and cant get past that.
I also tried booting into rescue mode from usb iso install but nothing happens when choosing to repair GRUB.
The listed devices in rescue mode are:
/dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sda5 /dev/sda6 debian uses sdb 1-2 and sdb1 is the only option to Reinstall GRUB on but it gives me "Unable to install GRUB in /dev/sdb1 This is a fatal error" message /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdb2
I am helping my pal to get into Debian (yes first timer).He is running W7 on a 500G SATA HDD and he has another 250G SATA HDD that he wants Debian to go to.Will Debian install grub on the master bootloader even if the installation is going on a separate hard drive?I have dual boot before but on the same hard drive.
i installed ubuntu inside windows but someone instead of uninstalling it directly deleted the ubuntu folder inside windows ,thinking that the partition will be deleted. but when i restarted the system and command prompt came and said unable to find boot record and i couldn't boot windows as well and a grub prompt came like grub>, then i inserted the windows boot cd and repair the boot record error but my problem is , instead of doing this way, can i do so by grub prompt directly without using winidows cd.
Im finally deleting vista from my disk, but as I am game addict I will re-install it afterwards just for games. Now I assume that will overwrite GRUB, so how do I restore boot record and at same time keep my grub config?
I installed lilo and it boots. How do I installed grub again. Do I just use synaptic manager to uninstall lilo and install grub?
[code]....
I know grub2 does not work, giving me error: ntoskrnl.exe missing or corrupt. I did install grub-legacy and it worked, but I had to re-install squeeze due to other problems. So, now I want to replace lilo with grub legacy.
Upgraded to 10.04 and now ubuntu will not load and we are sent to a grub shell. Tried reinstalling grub without success. can't find /boot/grub/stage1.can't reinstall system from CD.Partitioner fails with?
I rebooted, and got a new GRUB error: recordfail=1 if [ -n ${have_grubenv} ]; then save_env recordfail; fi set quiet=1 insmod ext2 set root=(hd0,2) search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 7b4afbe0-28fe-4403-bd86-c4364bf10f98 linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-16-generic root=UUID=7b4afbe0-28fe-4403-bd86-c4364bf10f98 ro single initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-16-generic
I have installed 11.2 next to my 11.1 version I have a few big problems with 11.2 and I like to completely remove it. there are 2 grub's active now. I want to remove the 11.2 grub and make the 11.1 grub master again, but I do not know where to change this, the MBR points to the 11.2 grub and changing menu.lst probably does not have any effect.
I have currently installed Xubuntu via wubi on my windows XP. When I try to boot, it displays an error message stating that wubildr.mbr is missing or corrupt and I cannot boot into xubuntu.
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,
I have a dual boot windows xp/ubuntu64 9.04 rig at home. Ubuntu is installed alongside windows(if i worded that correctly?). well last night i got the infamous error #15. so i popped in the live cd and messed around with grub. well i changed grubs boot to point to h0,5 which is where ubuntu resides and as you can guess i can not boot. i want to change it back to h0,0 or h0,1 however the hard drive is undetected.
I tried windows repair console but same thing cannot detect the drive. I pulled the drive out slipped it in my other machine and still same thing. so my question is how can i go about editing the grub menu.lst if i can't mount the drive?
Maybe i can just install a new grub/mbr? but i cant figure out hot to mount the drive.
I'm managing a residential network. Each flat is its own subnet, and can only communicate with the other flats through a router (i.e. no broadcast). 95% of these 300 subnets only contains windows computers (from lambda users).
My final goal is to be able to browse the entire network from any computer.
I set up a samba server acting as a wins server, and every computer is aware of it because it is registered in the dhcp. So name resolution is working fine for everyone.
The same samba server is set to be the "Domain master browser":
workgroup = WORKGROUP wins support = yes prefered master = yes local master = yes domain master = yes os level = 65
When I browse the network (using "net view" or "browstat view"), I can only see the servers which are in the same subnet as the domain master browser.
Now, when in a subnet the computers arrange themselves to find a "local master browser", the only visible computers are the one in that subnet.
What I don't understand is why all the local masters don't synchronize their lists with the domain master.
So, to sum up, every subnet get the following behaviour:
-if a local master is elected, the only visible computers are the one in the same subnet.
-if no local master is elected, the only visible computers are the one in the subnet of the domain master.
-if I add another samba, configured as a local master winning all elections, then the magic is working and the lists are synchronized.
What is expected: -every computer can see all the computer from all the subnets.
The first is I seem to have 3 GRUB installs. So whilst I update the one from my live session, the change does not appear in the boot up menu. I had installed 10.10 from a CD into a different partition (sda6), but that will not boot, so I have just deleted this and done another grub install and update. The kernel I am using has just been updated from 10.04 to 10.10 too, and it is this that I use and the Grub I have been working on (sda5).
I installed 11.04 after Windows 7. when the GRUB boot menu starts up there is an option for Win 7 boot but it will not boot windows. When that option is selected the screen changes colour for 2 seconds and then reverts to the GRUB menu. Ubuntu boots fine.I downloaded the Boot Info Script and ran it, the results are
Code: Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================[code].....
I updated yesterday and now when I start my laptop it goes in to grub rescue mode. I have booted from a 'live cd' and thought I could repair grub from there. In gparted however the partition with ubuntu (sda1) is seen as unknown file system, in terminal when I list the partition table it shows up as FAT16 type. When I try a grub-install it gives this error message:
In sda, I have 4 partitions, and I have windows 7 in one of the extended partitions [not in the primary partition].
In sdb, I have 3 partitions. 2 for storage, and 1 10GB drive for Ubuntu. Again, Ubuntu is not of a primary partition.
I had ubuntu 10.04 running on that for a long time. However, I wanted to reinstall ubuntu and use 10.10.This is what I did EXACTLY:Booted from Ubuntu install CD
Chose advanced istall
Selected sdb3 for Ubuntu
I installed GRUB2 on the SAME partition as Ubuntu aka sdb3 Installed then rebooted
I can boot into Ubuntu fine, but whenever I select Windows 7 bootloader from the GRUB menu, the screen goes black, and my PC reboots.
Boot Info:
Code: Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 [code]....
ls: reading directory sda6/: Input/output error
I have tried the testdisk/update-grub method, but it didn't work.
So my computer has ubuntu 9.10 installed 1st and I want to install win 7 in a separate partition. Basically, ubuntu 1st, win 7 later so far from what I learned from search results, grub 2 have problem with win 7 installed later and what was recommended was install win 7 before ubuntu. how ever I do not have the time to start over again because there are too many things to back up or install again. can I simply revert grub 2 to grub 1 again and resolve the problem?
I was installing sqeeze i386 on my laptop VOSTRO 1400 and got this the 'grub-pc' package failed to install into /target/. without the GRUB boot loader, the installed system will not boot.
I had a dual boot machine with fedora 12 and windows vista and I could use grub boot-loader to switch between two. Few days ago windows got corrupt and I have to reinstall it. I put windows 7 now and as usual it erased grub. So to reinstall I put the fedora 12 installation CD on and followed some usual setup steps. When I got the command line I issued the command "grub-install /dev/sda" (sda not hda because It showed bunch of sda, sda1..) but surprisingly it said grub command not found. I remember doing it before while it worked fine.
