Ubuntu Installation :: Win7 Has Overwritten Boot Sector?
Apr 21, 2011
I have been running a dual boot system with Windows XP and Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit with the dual boot selected by Grub (placed y an Ubuntu install).
Recently I have installed Window 7 Home on a spare disc. My Bios allows me to select which disc to boot.
The Win7 installation has overwritten the boot sector on the WinXP/Ubuntu dic so that it is now not bootable.
I can sse all my Ubuntu files with a Live Linux Disc, so I can get all my files back.
Is there any easy way to re-install Grub or should I just do a clean install of Ubuntu, perhaps to a blank partition?
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Apr 23, 2011
i installed ubuntu after windows 7 but now i cant boot windows 7 i tried the start up repair and I've read through some questions answered on here and int figure out the problem i don't want to uninstall ubuntu unless it's my only option
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Mar 7, 2010
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.
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May 17, 2009
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?
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May 11, 2010
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.
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Dec 19, 2010
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.
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Aug 20, 2010
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?
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Nov 21, 2010
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?
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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?
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Jun 7, 2010
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
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Jul 12, 2011
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?
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Jun 26, 2011
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.
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Sep 16, 2010
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,
[code]...
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Aug 6, 2011
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.
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Oct 18, 2010
I have searched and read threads about the Bitlocker, grub and TPM issues that might show up, but I can't draw any conclusions as some information contradict each other. To make sure I don't screw up my pc as thought I need to make a new post.
At work I'm supposed to run Windows 7 and encrypt the win-partition with Bitlocker. I have installed Windows, turned on the encryption and it ties into the TPM. But as I am moving over to the *nix department I want to run Ubuntu as dual boot to check everything rusn fine with all the systems I need. Before I installed Windows I partioned the disk:
1,5 GB for system/bitlocker requirement
147 GB for Windows, C:
85 GB which is empty where I intend to install Ubuntu (not formated yet)
I boot into Windows with my bitlocker/TPM key on an USB-stick. Without the usb-stick the pc won't boot. Now, before I try to install Ubuntu I want to make sure to do it the right so I don't mess up the Windows installation or won't be able to boot the pc at all.
There seem to be several "schools" to this. Some suggest I should have installed Ubuntu first, then Windows and then encrypt. Some say, no worries just fire away and install since you are not planning to read the windows-partition from Ubuntu. Or an alternative, install but make sure to deactive the encryption during installation. Some say, install but make sure grub is installed in (multiple choices) location.
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Apr 29, 2011
So we install Windows 7 home premium. Then in goes the Ubuntu Disk. Ubuntu seems to think that the windows 7 partition is one big lump of unallocated space. Tried multiple re-installs of Windows 7, all concluding the same. A bit of googling told me that it has something to do with partition tables or something. I even tried to use Gdisk to delete Gpt from the windows disk, which - as I have absolutely no idea what any of it means, - resulted in me screwing up the entire Win7 partition hence win7 not being able to boot anymore.
i've seen on the internet include a lot of technical garble which I don't understand. I've been using Linux for a while, but as far as partitioning and dual booting is concerned, it's always gone smoothly for me up until now
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Sep 1, 2011
i have ubuntu 10 and win 7 dual booting on one hdd, all of a sudden grub says error no such partition when i select windows at the boot menu. and i cant get to the win7 partition from ubuntu (to play music and stuff, this used to work, places, mount filesystem, 250 gigs whatever). i've tried the stuff in these links and nothing has worked so farpartition info
sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 29094 233697523+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 29095 30401 10498477+ 83 Linux
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Nov 16, 2010
I've installed Ubuntu 10.10 (64bit) next to my Windows 7, in SSD hard drive. I'm able to boot Ubuntu with no problem, but my problem is my Windows. When I try to enter windows 7, all I get is a black screen with one blink char, and from there it does nothing...
My PC:
cpu i5 760
4gb ram
mb gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3
gpu gainward nvidia gtx 460
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Mar 21, 2011
I have the option of selecting between win7 and Ubuntu during start up, but when i select Ubuntu it goes to the first 2 lines of command and then restarts again. Windows 7 works fine. This is the second installation of ubuntu on this computer, the first attempt did the same thing (would not boot into ubuntu but win was fine) after i lost power. This time i shut the computer off for a full week while i was on vacation. I have switched between windows and ubuntu a couple of times and had no issue with this installation.
HP Pavilion
AMD AthalonII X4
8GB ram
1TB HD
AMD HD 4550
64-bit windows 7
wubi
Ubuntu 10.04LTS 64-bit
All stock and at cool temperatures.
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Apr 8, 2011
I am trying to install Ubuntu to an external usb hard drive (WD Elements SE). I am also choosing to install the grub bootloader to this disk (/dev/sdb) because I do not want anything modified on the internal drive. The installation appears to go okay, but when I try to boot to the usb drive, I get the error, "no boot sector on usb device" and it immediately falls back to my interal drive. I have tried this installation with both 10.10 (amd64) and 11.04 (amd64). How can I fix this?
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Jan 13, 2010
I bought a new computer (laptop HP DV6-1375dx) and I want to set a dual boot with win7, like I did with my desktop (clean install) However, my question is, with the new laptop all I have is the rescue disks vs. having the single OEM version. IS that a problem? for the desktop I followed lifehackers article "Dual boot win7 and ubuntu in perfect harmony." no problems at all.
what I am afraid of is formatting the new hard drive and the recovery partition and not being able to use the disks for some reason....am I over-reacting?
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May 18, 2010
I had 9.10 installed for a long time as a dual boot with win7 on this computer. I mostly use win7, but today i went into ubuntu and it said there was a new version available so i installed it.the error occured with the grub installation. it said if i was unsure of where to install it, i should install it on all drives, so I did. ever since then i've been looking online using this liveCD to find some solution to fix the problem, but I cant.here is what i've tried:
1. i downloaded a windows 7 repair disc and used the bootrec.exe /fixboot and /fixmbr commands, but this ends up with a blank screen with a cursor blinking.
2. I've tried re-installing grub, but this ends with the boot freezing at a screen with something like: "sh:grub>" and i can't do anything.
3. I've tried testdisk but this also didn't work for me.
i've been trying to fix this problem for 7 hours now but nothing. so i'm hoping maybe someone here would help my specific situation out.the current status of my computer: i have uninstalled grub in sda1 and sda5 (my ubuntu should be in sda5) and i used the windows7 repair CD to /fixboot and /fixmbr, so now when i boot, it freezes at a blank screen with a blinking cursor. anyone can help me, please?
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Dec 25, 2010
I had win 7 installed, decided to install ubuntu on this desktop computer. I had a windows partition, and a few other partitions, one with a wubi install of windows that I never used, so I decided to delete it, while installing ubuntu 10.10. I had free unallocated space for installing ubuntu, which was contiguous to the partition of the wubi install of ubuntu, so I decided to merge them, I did all this in gparted while installing ubuntu 10.10, 2gb swap, then 15gb root and all that remained to home.
Everything worked out fine (of course I never touched the win7 partition). After reboot grub doesn't show win 7, so I thought I'll just add it to grub, followed a few tutorials on this forum, but nothing worked. Then I remembered that the partition which I deleted to merge with the ubuntu partition, was an Active partition, and soon found out that my win7 partition was not active! (this is probably because I installed win 7 while I had still win vista, so that active partition was where vista was).
So now a ~100mb apparently unallocated partition was the active partition (win 7 hidden boot partition?), and trying the Startup repair of win 7 cd doesn't work, tried bootrec /fixboot, successfully, but bootrec /rebuildbcd can't find any Windows installation, even after setting the win7 partition as active with DiskPart. This is almost entirely a windows problem, but I just wanted to have Ubuntu working alongside Windows (I use a lot adobe's sw, which runs sadly only on windows, otherwise I would use only ubuntu).
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Dec 28, 2010
I want to create a dual boot between Windows 7 and Ubuntu. I have done the following:
1. I installed Win7 on my second SATA drive WD740AD.
2. Then I installed Ubuntu on my first SATA drive WD5000A.
When I boot my machine, the machine will always boot linux. I can't even choose Windows 7. My knowledge of Linux is very limited. I have looked for information on the web and found some information about grub but I cant make it work. Mostly all the information is about installing Win7 and Linux on 1 HDD.
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Jan 5, 2011
I installed via wubi on windows 7 on a separate clean drive formatted with win7.
Installation went ok and system boots with a choice to go with either win7 or ubuntu.
After selecting ubuntu I get a screen with msg saying error with wubildr.mbr and asks me to pop in win7 disk to fix it. Why its asking for win7 disk to fix win 7? I see both wubi files in C: (root). Systems booting up ok with win7.
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Feb 11, 2011
I've tried this a couple of times and can't load Ubuntu.Here's the scenerio, I have 3 partitions.
/dev/sda1 = ntfs (Win7)
/dev/sda2 = ext4 with the / mount point
/dev/sda3 = swap space
I've some tutorials where I need a /boot partition as well and others where I just need the root partition. At the bottom, there is a drop down box for you to select the device for boot loader installation. Those options include /dev/sda, /dev/sda1 (Win7) and /dev/sda2.
I need to do to get the dual boot working? My first thought is to install the boot loader onto /dev/sda but I'm unsure. It keeps booting Win7 and can't get the option to load Ubuntu.
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Jan 21, 2010
I used to have a win7 hp laptop. I decided to use ubuntu9.10. i installed it to my second drive (d after shrinking of c: drive to 100 gb. After installation of ubuntu, i try to boot win7 from grub screen, it goes to blue screen and restarting, not opening. But when i choose ubuntu, it is working properly. When i try to repair it, the win7 cd does not see any drive, only its x drive (where it boots). how can i start my win7 again. I am working on this 2 days.
============================ Boot Info Summary: ==============================
=> Grub 1.97 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #4 for /boot/grub.
=> Syslinux is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb
[Code]....
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Feb 20, 2010
I set up a dual boot system with Win7 and Ubuntu 9.10. Ubuntu is the first OS listed in the boot menu. I would like to change the boot order so Windows is first. Also after running a few updates I now have multiple boot items listed for Ubuntu that I'm sure are no longer needed. Having never edited Grub and searching through the forum, I'm asking help. I going to guess that I want to edit grub.cfg. If so, what do I need to change within the following information?
[Code]....
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May 24, 2010
Does ANYONE have a stable dual boot Win7 & Ubuntu 10.04 system? I have been trying for WEEKS to get a computer configured for my student lab. I get things going and everything seems to work for a few days. And then for no reason, the next time I reboot, Grub just seems to commit suicide.
Latest example. Win 7 & Ubuntu have been co-existing perfectly fine for about a week. Iow, I do something, then reboot, and the grub menu comes up - I select something and it boots my OS of choice for that session.
But today, I've been putting the last few touches on this computer before I use Clonezilla to copy it to all of the computers in the lab. You know - hard stuff like:
* set the default profile in Windows
* install a printer in both Ubuntu & Windows
* set a background image for the logon screens that have our "don't do anything bad" policy.
how there is nothing in there that should mess w/ grub or the boot loader, right? Yet I reboot the computer, I get to where grub should load - and BARF - I get the Bios splash screen again and the computer reboots on it's own. What the !@(#$&!@#$% is going on that this keeps happening to begin with?
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Jul 31, 2010
I was trying to dual boot ubuntu on my desktop which has windows 7 already installed on it with raid 0. I have 2 500GB hard drive and when I boot from cd and try to install ubuntu it only detect one of my hard drives and it said I only have 500GB and there is no OS installed on this machine! I look online but I couldn't find any solution!
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