Ubuntu :: No Dual Boot - Windows Overwrite Grub File
Jan 5, 2011
I've recently left Windows behind for good and have come to Linux (Ubuntu.) However, I've run into problems after trying to dual boot windows 7 and ubuntu. When I restarted my computer, I got a black screen with white text reading "Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported". I have the Ubuntu live cd and was able to try Ubuntu without having to install it, but after I put in a flash drive with Windows 7 on it, the Ubuntu CD has stopped working entirely.
The weird thing is, the computer that I installed Ubuntu on, already had Ubuntu and Windows 7 on it. And every OS was booting successfully. The reason I deleted the Ubuntu that was already on the computer, is because there were many different versions. I wanted to do a clean sweep and only have Ubuntu and Windows 7 installed on the computer. I know that if you try to dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu, Windows will overwrite the GRUB file, making it unable to dual boot.
is it possible to use a Windows-based recovery partition on a dual-boot computer to overwrite the Ubuntu partition and remove the GRUB loader? For instance, if you booted up your computer, accessed the hidden recovery partition and used it to reset the computer to it's factory default settings, would that effectively remove the Ubuntu partition and the GRUB loader? Would a completely new installation of Windows overwrite/uninstall Ubuntu and GRUB automatically?
I tried to install linux on hard disk and it installed without any problem. However, when i boot i directly get the windows boot loader screen and no grub screen. I reinstalled linux. I tried to fix grub, but still no grub screen.
I had 9.10 installed and I did an upgrade to 10.04. However I cannot see anymore my Windows Vista partition with grub.. I have a Toshiba laptop Satellite p305.This is my boot script output:
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 [code].......
i am having a problem with my dual boot setup. I originally installed windows XP on a 100gb hard drive, from there i downloaded and burnt ubuntu off so i could install it on my 200gb hard drive. For a little bit i struggled to even get it to install because it wouldn't recognize my onboard nvidia graphics, i ended up having to get an alt boot disk and fix it with technique in this link:
[URL]
Now after the bios boot, my screen shuts off for awhile and takes me directly to the login screen for ubuntu. No Grub, no windows boot options, nothing. I tried booting windows by choosing it from the bios boot menu but all it does is hang at prompt and doesn't boot at all. I tried the live cd fix and reinstalled grub but nothing changed. What i think is happening is that it boots the Grub menu but it doesn't display it because of graphical confrontations. It hangs for about 10 seconds, the grub default time, and then turns my monitor back on to display the Ubuntu login screen.
I had a dual boot system with 3 partitions, Windows 7 on one partition, and Windows XP on another partition and a Data partition. I decided to load Ubuntu 10.10 on the Windows XP partition.During installation I selection manual partition, and deleted Windows XP.after successful completion of Ubuntu installation "Grub" directly boots into Ubuntu, it doesn't show me the OS selection screen. After following some forum posts I did an update grub
Code:
Generating grub.cfg ... Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic
I am running a dual-boot of Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7. My current setup uses EasyBCD to pick between Ubuntu and windows. If I pick Ubuntu, it then fires up GRUB, which then goes to Ubuntu. My question is: Can I skip GRUB altogether in the boot process? I rather suspect that it's slowing things down a lot. I've set the GRUB default OS timeout to 0, but it still boots slowly, which annoys me. way to skip GRUB entirely and use only EasyBCD for both OSes?
HW config is: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition, MSI 785GTM-E45, 2X 1Gb Kingston HyperX PC2-8500. I have set up GRUB to dualboot openSUSE 11.2 and WindowsXP. Initially i had set up system with defaults: CPU@2600MHz (200X13) and therefore RAM@800MHz. Both openSUSE 11.2 and WindowsXP worked just fine. Memtest86 found no problems.
But after a while i decided to change this setup to: CPU@2500MHz (250X10) and therefore RAM@1000MHz, as it promised better overall performance. And now Windows still boots and works better then before. Memtest86 still can't find any problem. But openSUSE 11.2 hangs at boot. I've suspected cpufreq governor, but changing from Ondemand to Conservative in /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq doesn't help.
I just set up a dual boot on a system with fedora 12 and XP. XP in on one hard drive (sda) and Fedora on a second hard drive (sdb).
I installed grub on the Fedora disk so as to not touch the windows disk at all.
Prior to installation, in the bios, I set the Fedora disk (sdb) first in the boot sequence, and then XP (sda) so that the grub loader would boot up by default. (If I set the windows drive first then the system bypasses grub and loads straight into windows.)
My system can now boot up into Fedora fine, but if I select windows from the grub loader menu I just get a blinking cursor - windows will not boot.What do I have to do so that grub can boot into XP?
I have my laptop NC6910p from HP with windows 7 and Ubuntu lucid as dual boot managed by grub loader.
Yesterday I made a mistake and formated the ubuntu partition as ntfs with a windows media because I needed to do a test in that partition. Now, off course, when I boot the computer is not finding GRUB and naturally not booting to windows.
I tried to boot with ubuntu live cd and did the apt-get install ms-sys but it just does not find the package. I can browse the windows files and all of that.
After the last Lubuntu update Windows XP disappeared from the grub and it doesn't appear on the OS list. Is there any way I can fix or restore the grub to display XP again? I ran TestDisk and the XP partition is there undamaged, it also appears in the file system and I can access the files in Lubuntu; it's just not appearing in the grub anymore.
11.04 installed on free space I had setup but it didn't install Grub2 for a dual boot (with Windows 7 Pro). It may have gotten confused with my disk setup. Drives and their groupings (Windows lingo):
- Windows 7 Pro on C-drive (appears to be sdb2), it is a SSD - The free space was setup on this SSD and Ubuntu is located on sdb5 (Linux) and sdb6 (swap space). - Applications stored on D-drive (RAID0 with 2 small SSDs using RST (Intel Rapid Storage Technology). - data on a RAID card using HDs in RAID0.
Small wonder it got confused, if that is the problem. I have a LiveCD I can use to boot, is that the best? What are the commands to install. Is there a better way?
I'm running 10.10 32 bit and would like to reformat to 10.10 64 bit. However, I am dual booting with windows 7 under grub. I've had some crap experience (my fault) with grub before and would like to make sure I have a plan. I've downloaded the 10.10 64 bit. Can I simply boot and install 10.10 64 bit without concern of messing up grub? Horror story: Installed ubuntu once before with dual boot and somehow grub couldn't find windows
I have a dual boot System with Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Remix and Windows XP SP3 on an Asus eeePC 1000HE. I had some troubles with updating kernels etc. and I ended up with following problem:
After grub reinstall, I am able to boot Ubuntu, also I can mount the windows partition properly. Trying to boot into Windows, I get the error:
Code:
It's all on one hard drive which doesn't show any errors:
Code:
Partition table entries are not in disk order
Code:
Some partitions don't show a file system because they are luks-encrypted.
As I mentioned earlier, I am able to mount sda1. I think the problem is that the Partition Boot Sector is corrupted, even though I am not sure if the ntfs partition is damaged at all or if GRUB is the problem.
As I said I had problems with a kernel update and therefore had to reinstall GRUB. I think, but I am not sure, that I accidentally installed GRUB on sda1 (the windows partition) instead of on sda. After I installed GRUB on sda again, I was able to boot linux and fixed sda1 with testdisk. Before, sda1 showed as four partitions (sda1p1, ... , sda1p4). I was not able to mount sda1 till I fixed it with testdisk. testdisk says the Boot Sector of sda1 is OK, so does ntfsfix.
Finally, an extract from my /boot/grub/menu.lst:
Code: ...
The Windows XP entry is added by myself. I don't know much about grub, so there might be the error.
I tried to keep it as short as possible (this is only the end of the story), I hope I didn't forget anything important. Please ask if there is something not clear.
I am in Tanzania with this netbook, so it is not possible to boot Windows CD and fix the windows partition with it, also I don't have a very fast Internet connection.
Is there a way to fix this without a Windows CD? Maybe it is just a dumb mistake in the menu.lst?
I've been using Debian for a few years but always on dedicated boxes and/or VMs.
Finally decided to dual boot Debian and Windows on my main Desktop PC.
Installed as I normally would using, however this time using a seperate drive (one for the existing Windows 10 install and the other for Debian), Debian install detects that windows has an EFI partition and sticks an entry in there, which is fair enough, and everything working fine. Then I spent some time configuring all my software and set it all up just the way I like it. I've rebooted Debian a few times to check it's working correctly and it is.
The issue arrives when I reboot and load into Windows 10. It boots fine.
However after a further reboot GRUB no longer loads... and the machine just boots directly into Windows 10.
After doing some further digging into my EFI partition (and reinstalling various times) it would appear that after a reboot Windows 10 deletes the entry GRUB creates in my EFI partition after EVERY reboot.
Done some googling and most people advise turning off 'fast boot' in Windows as it locks certain partitions to facilitate the machine going into hibernation, only to find that it's always been turned off on my machine (I recall due to a driver issue with my graphics card this had to be turned off when I installed Windows 10).
I've found this article on the Ubuntu forums : [URL] .... however I've tried their steps and windows is still doing a hostile takeover of my EFI partion after a reboot!
Any way to stop Windows 10 from interfering with my EFI files after a reboot? (without doing the obvious thing and kill Windows off).
Rebuilt an old box of mine and changed up the drives. Did not think it was an issue as I was formatting the drives and reinstalling the systems. I installed XP first. Then PCLOS. After PCLOS was installed XP would not boot and gave me an error saying the BOOTMGR was not found and to restart. I figured that I just had to map the drives as XP was installed on HD1 and not HD0. But no changes I made to the GRUB configuration seemed to work.I have run a script to get all the information you guys will need already. Let me know what I am missing here
Code:
Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== => Grub 0.97 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #1 for /boot/grub/stage2 and /boot/grub/menu.lst. => Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb
A few days ago I went to perform the Service Pack 1 Upgrade for Win 7. This crashed out with an error. On researching the problem I found a solution to fix the problem by marking the Windows partition as active. I did this (via Computer Mgmt -> Disk Mgmt). This allowed the SP1 upgrade to work, however on reboot I got an error BOOTMGR missing. This I rather rashly resolved by using the Windows 7 install DVD in Recovery mode to reinstall the Windows Boot manager via bootrec /Fixboot I thought I would then be able to use the Opensuse 11.2 install disk to fix grub.
I use the Opensuse install disk and select Repair system -> Expert Mode -> Install New Boot Loader then select Other -> Reread Configuration from Disk. This adds Win 7 back into the grub menu. I then select OK and get the message "the bootloader was installed successfully". The problem then comes when I click my way through OK and Next to finish the install. At the end of the process I get the message "An error occurred during the installation" and I'm no further forward.
FYI the PC has a single SATA disk installed partitioned as follows:
dev/sda1 100Mb Win System Parkition dev/sda2 Windows NTFS dev/sda3 Windows FAT
I installed Windows XP Pro and RedHat Linux Enterprise 5 on my PC for my purpose. The PC is used by other family members too and they need only Windows OS for browsing. It is becoming problem for them to reboot after the PC enters into Linux by default. I am still learning Linux and I want to edit the /boot/grub.conf file to make Windows as default OS to boot. The following is the content of my grub.conf file (FYI):
I have 2 harddisks 1 tb and 160 gb. In 1 tb fedora is installed. In 160 gb windows is installed. 1 tb is the master. 160 gb is not being detected. How to edit grub.conf file to edit the menu?
The content of grub.conf is # grub.conf generated by anaconda # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file # NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, e.g. # root (hd0,1) # kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda2 # initrd /boot/initrd-[generic-]version.img #boot=/dev/sda default=1 timeout=5 splashimage=(hd0,1)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz hiddenmenu title Fedora (2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686) root (hd0,1) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686 ro root=UUID=bfc7d406-5ae3-4335-a2d8-37472dcfa7dc rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.img title Other rootnoverify (hd1,0) chainloader +1
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.
I've just installed Ubuntu after my windows os became completely infested with trojans and viruses. How do I get rid off windows? I can't get rid off the viruses because I can't install an anitvirus for some reason. It's still there when I start up the computer. I don't think I'm using grub, though I'm not completely sure. Is there a way to verify this? On a similar note, can the trojans and virus affect on windows affect ubuntu?
I am about to get a new laptop here soon and I was planning a dual boot like I have on my current laptop (Win7 and Ubuntu), but I have something special in mind. I looked around the forum to see if there was anything like what I had or if it was even possible but I didn't see anything quite like this.I was wondering if this was even possible, and if so, would anyone be able to tell me what filesystem I should use for my windows swap partition?
3 partitions (in order): Windows 7, CentOS and shared data partition.
I need to increase the size of the Windows 7 partition (c:windowswinsxs seems to be something not easily remedied).
GParted didn't work in moving things around (bad sector) so I wiped out its partition (# 2 out of 3) and I was able to increase the size of the Windows 7 partition (I can reinstall CentOS easily and not much work lost).
Except ... no more grub menu (unsurprising). This incantation does allow me to boot into Windows 7.
Is there any way of rebuilding the grub menu short of reinstalling CentOS (5.5)?
I've had Windows 7 installed for a few months now and would like to install Fedora 12 on a separate partition. I've tried this three times now, all of them ending with something wrong. The problem that exists for me now is that when I install Fedora 12 and boot up for the first time in GRUB, Fedora 12 works fine. ut when I boot into Windows 7 from GRUB, it just comes up with a black screen and says "BOOTMGR is missing; press ctrl + alt + del to restart" at the top. I don't believe that GRUB is booting into the wrong partition because I have no Windows recovery partition, just Windows 7. Also when I try and fix the Windows 7 partition with the system recovery disk, it says that the volume is corrupt every time. At this point I have everything backed up on a separate drive so I'm open to try installing Fedora 12 again even if it risks screwing up my Windows 7 partition, I would really just like to have a functioning dual boot.
Ubuntu 9.10 was set up to handle the booting selection - previously I thought it was xp but Ubuntu 9.10 "did" it. The system started out as a xp / ubuntu 9.10 dual boot on a 400gb drive. xp has 210gb, ub has 80 and their is a 100gb shared storage. Xp was installed first and then I followed a guide over at linuxconfig.org to get ub installed so that I could select which OS was wanted at boot. Ubuntu manages the boot up menu (Went back to look at my notes from the original setup) The owner tried to update to ub 11.04 and afterall was said and done the machine now boots to the message
error file not found grub rescue I can't say if 11.04 was properly installed or not. Ask whatever you like and I'll give the best answer I can. I think the xp install is okay but I can't say for certain as I don't know how to boot it outside the bootmanager at startup. Data has been saved so if I have to blow it all away and start over I can but I'm hoping I won't have to.
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 am having some issues with dual booting my SL6.1 and Windows. The situation is that i recently acquired an old hard drive from a non-working computer of mine with Windows already installed (i know the windows is functional, as i tested it on my new PC with SL6.1 currently installed & everything runs fine)
The problem is that after editing the grub.config to include windows, windows will no longer boot after an attempt to install a legit version of McAffee anti-virus software which coincidently was only after the first attempt at running both OS's in a dual-boot fashion. Except past the windows start up screen before the dreaded blue-screen. Which is weird because SL6.1 OS will still boot & works perfectly fine like always, so it doesn't really make sense.
My current setup is: Disk 1: Solid-State: Boot Partition SL6 LVM1: Root Partition Disk 2: Hard Drive: SL6 LVM2: User, Temp & Swap Space Partitions (Different LVM to Root) Disk 3: Hard Drive: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
My guess is its windows MBR. The reason i say this is because the Hard Drive contents of the Windows software still appears intact when accessing the drive from the Linux OS. I don't won't to go through the rigmarole of re-installing both OS's. So hopefully their is a relatively simple solution.
i am trying to change the boot order on the GRUB menu so that the countdown automatically starts on an older kernel. From what i can see all the solutions on the web want me to edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file. The problem is that i don't have one. Someone also mentioned that if i don't have a menu.lst file then i should look for the grub.conf file. I don't have on of those either. The closest thing in /boot/grub is grub.cfg but that looks nothing like the descriptions i have heard of /boot/grub/menu.lst file
