Software :: Cant Fix Boot Loader - Primary Partition Wiped Out
Dec 21, 2010
A bad install of linux gave me a grub that won't go away. My only hope of restoring my Windows XP and retrieving the data that was backed up (most wasn't) is to somehow access the recovery partition. That's still there. The primary partition was wiped out. This is a remanufactured system: I -don't- have a Windows CD. I -don't- have fdisk. I -don't- have any of the utility disks I'd normally use (they're 300 miles away, buried in snow and ice right now).
I do have a disk and a thumb drive with the Windows boot files on it, but grub doesn't recognize these. If I could just get rid of that grub file, I think I could boot from either the thumb drive or the cd, or even the partition with the recovery files on it, but I can't get rid of grub. I think even if I could get fdisk on either a cd or thumb drive, grub would override it. Any one know how to kill that file WITHOUT fdisk and WITHOUT the Windows CD? I have live Linux disks, Ubuntu 8.10 and 10.10 have been the most promising, but still can't do this.
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May 23, 2010
I want to properly install Unbuntu on my multi boot pc. I would like to install to E partition which is currently ntfs. I have never installed Linux. What drive should the boot loader go? I can format E partition during install? Does it still need a swap file partition? If so, can that be made from E partition? How big? I'd like to have a boot menu to choose Ubuntu or a choice that takes me to the windows boot loader. Would that boot loader get wiped if I did a fresh install of 7 to the I drive? Also, what would be the proper way to upgrade Ubuntu? I see a lot of post where people are doing it wrong.
Here is my drives layout. Should install Ubuntu to my SSD J drive instead? I tried the live CD. Seems to work well. I have a Asus Max Formula MB, Phenom II 6core, ATI 4870. MB has a built in Via sound card. Not sure if that was working.
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Jun 14, 2010
I installed ubuntu using wubi and then I tried installing grub 2 but it failed. I need a way to reinstall the mbr sp it will load the windows 7 loader from the first partition.
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Feb 25, 2010
I having a problem getting my grub loader to see one of my hard drives. I added a drive, and my grub loader lost track of where everything was. I couldn't get my old linux (Red Hat 9) so I installed SuSe on my new hard drive. But I need my be able to boot from my old hard drive because it has apps that only run on the earlier version. From /proc/partitions the old hard drive is sdd
major minor #blocks name
8 0 976762584 sda
8 1 2104483 sda1
8 2 20972857 sda2
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Mar 9, 2010
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?
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Dec 14, 2009
One question:An OS only can boot from primary partition, not in an extended partition ?
grub 0.97
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May 10, 2010
I was unsatisfied with the 40second boot time of lucid and was searching for a solution for a while but didn't find anything yet. But today I found a way to boot 10seconds quicker.Lucid is installed here as suggested by the installer:
Primary rootpartition (/dev/sda1)
Logical partition (/dev/sda4)
swap (/dev/sda5)
[code]....
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May 15, 2010
On a certain computer, I had four primary partitions. The person who installed the Windows 7 on the computer made two partitions for the Windows (sda1 and sda2). Then I made another two primary partitions (sda3 and sda4). sda3 was empty. sda4 is an extended partition that contained the /swap, and /.According to someone else, some viruses get in on the Windows partitions and can then get over to the Linux partitions if they are primary and right after the Windows partitions, or something like that. This person suggested that I create sda3 when I install Linux(SLES 10), but to install Linux on sda4. Then later I can change sda3 to secondary.So I tried this, and the Linux installation went fine.
I decided to change sda3 before I load the application software onto the computer.So I put the GParted CD in, but to my surprise I realised that the harddisk was actually 1 TB, and not 500 GB as I thought. So I had extra space to the right of sda4. I wasn't quite sure what to do with sda3. I thought that perhaps it would be better to unallocate sda3, move the current sda4 to the left, and then make another primary partition on the right of sda4, or just stretch sda4 both ways.Anycase, I unallocated sda3, and just left sda4 as it was.Hm, perhaps you can anticipate the end of the story. I removed the GParted CD, and restarted the computer, but now the computer doesn't let me choose whether I want to boot into Linux or Windows. Um, it doesn't boot at all from the harddisk.
I know it's dangerous to play with partitions, but sometimes the job won't be done if you are too afraid of doing anything, and I dare say you won't learn anything either. There was nothing on sda3, so I didn't think it would have nasty after effects. There isn't any important data on this computer yet, it was two new installations of Windows and Linux. So I guess I could format the harddisk and just reinstall everything, but I would like to learn what goes on underneath the surface.
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Aug 30, 2011
I am currently running a dual boot machine with Ubuntu 11.04 and Windows Vista.Is there any way I can delete the Linux partition and Grub boot loader without affecting the Windows partition at all?I would also like to be able to repartition all of the space that was previously occupied by Linux.
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Jan 17, 2015
I am having issues with Grub 2 after installing Debian 7.8.0.The computer is a HP Pavilion 500-307nb. I made the original harddrive /dev/sdb and inserted a Samsung Evo 840 as /dev/sda. From the original hard drive (/dev/sdb), I wiped the windows partition, but left all other partitions unchanged (in case I would ever want to recover the desktop to its original state). I replaced the wiped windows partition with a swap partition and an LVM partition.These are my hard drive partitions:
/dev/sda (Samsung Evo 840)
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 3146kB 2097kB primary bios_grub
2 3146kB 944MB 941MB ext4 boot
3 944MB 94.4GB 93.4GB host lvm
4 94.4GB 1000GB 906GB guests lvm
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The partition /dev/sda3 has 2 logical volumes with filesystem ext4 that I mount to / and /home.The partition /dev/sda2 is mounted to /boot..When I install like this, Debian installs fine, however Grub2 is not installed correctly.Debian installs grub-pc which seems not able to boot the gpt partition. So I boot the Debian CD in rescue mode and execute:
mount /dev/sda2 /boot
aptitude purge grub-pc
aptitude -y install grub-efi
After rebooting, I come in the grub rescue shell, which says: error: no such device: 986f2176--4a4b-4222-83b9-8636a034b3c7.
When I then enter in the grub rescue shell:
set boot=(hd0,gpt2)
set prefix=(hd0,gpt2)/grub
insmod normal
normal
Grub and Debian start up correctly.why can Grub not start up automatically correctly? Where does the UUID 986f2176--4a4b-4222-83b9-8636a034b3c7 come from? I have reinstalled Grub several times, I have reinstall Debian several times, I have even wiped all partitions from /dev/sda and recreated a new gpt table with parted and manually set the partitions in parted. Still on each reinstallation, Grub fails because it cannot find exactly the same UUID. Since this UUID is always the same, it must be stored somewhere, but it cannot be the partitions, I have wiped them and the partition table several times.
I did though a firmware update of the Samsung Evo 840 before reinstallation, could this be a cause?Also the problem is not in grub.cfg. Grub starts correctly if I enter the commands above in the grub rescue screen and the UUID value does not appear there.
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Jul 22, 2010
I am tying to add Ubuntu 10.04 desktop i386 to my Windows 7 PC. I do not want to mess with the Windows boot loader, so as the sentence from the guide at the bottom states, tried to put GRUB onto the newly created partition for Ubuntu. I could not because upon choosing the device (which turned out to /dev/sda5) , the "OK" button was disabled
"Manual" option was chosen above - on a second try, I chose "use all available free space" and Ubuntu created #5 and #6 on SCSI1 (0, 0, 0). The new device was /dev-sda-1, but again, Ubuntu would not put the boot loader on it.
"If you have a problem with changing the MBR code, you might prefer to just install the code for pointing to GRUB to the first sector of your Ubuntu partition instead."
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Oct 11, 2010
I want install 10.10 Maverick on a new partition alongside my OS X and 10.04 Lucid installs to see if it works on my machine. I'm a little unsure about some things.
1)Do I need to install the GRUB boot loader on this new partition?
2)Can I use the same swap space or is recommended to create a new swap?
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Oct 27, 2010
My disk partitions are as following:
Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x58b258b2
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There already exist an os XP before my installing of ubuntu.When I installed my ubuntu 9.10, I selected to install grub2 on the logical partition sda7. But when I typed command sudo dd if=/dev/sda7 of=mbr bs=512 count=1, I found that the file mbr was eerily full of zero bytes. How does this happen? Or grub2 can't be installed on a logical partition? But it works very well along with win7 rather than XP.
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Apr 29, 2010
I'm running SuSE 11.2, dual booted with Windows 7. SuSE installed fine, but when I rebooted, it went straight to windows and didn't give me the option of booting into SuSE. I reinstalled SuSE and went into the boot settings in Yast. When I rebooted, neither Windows nor SuSe would boot. I ran a system repair from the SuSE disk, at the boot loader settings, it displays the SuSE Linux partition and the Failsafe Linux recovery partition. I did not format any drives in the system repair. How do I add the Windows partition to the boot loader settings?
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Mar 29, 2011
i want to install opensuse on my new lap top i partition my hard (600gb) with 5 parts:
c: 97 gb
d: 150 gb
e: 150 gb
f: 100 gb
g: 50 gb
and 38 gb unlocated part
in opensuse instalation , the yast makes a 2gb for swap 14gb = root , 21 gb = home, but in Instalation Overview under Booting has a red error: the Boot loader Installed On a Partition that does not Lie Entirely Blew 128 GB .The system maight Not Boot;
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Sep 20, 2009
I am using Fedora 10, and was wondering if it is possible to install Windows XP on a free partition, without it replacing the GRUB boot loader?
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Oct 25, 2010
I let a 'friend' use my laptop over the weekend. Now when I turn it on, it loads the BIOS details, then says no active partition, then no OS cannot be found.
It looks like they have deleted the partition with SuSE with the Grub Loader.
I cannot load up SuSE or Windows 7!
Any ideas on how to recover the boot to load Windows 7?
I have tried using the Windows 7 install disc to repair - but it does not recognise that Windows is installed and wants to do a clean install only.
Is it worth trying to reinstall SuSE and hope it detects Windows on the other partition? (I assume it is still there!)
I cannot get to a command prompt.
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Aug 16, 2009
install fedora 11 on Vista I want to keep the windows boot loader and also install on a usb drive or a seperate partition that has 10GB free "install doesn't see partition's". Recently I installed ubuntu and had a major problem with booting, without having the usb drive connected I couldn't boot windows so uninstalled it. I'm trying to install now but install does'nt give me any option to select partitions from my drives one 320GB "portable, 3 partitions" and 80GB "main os 2 partitions one partition has 10GB free"
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May 19, 2011
I just did a fresh install of 11.4 and I LOVE IT!!! One of the little issues I am having though, is that there is no login screen. No matter what settings I change it still auto-logs me in.
I am using GRUB and the Boot Loader Location has both "Boot from MBR" and "Boot from Root Partition". Is this right? I would think that I should just boot from the MBR.
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May 2, 2011
i was using 10.10 and this disaster occured when i tried to install 11.04 replacing 10.10. i have a separate home partition, while installing 11.04 i chose one weird option called "encrypt home partition"i didnt chose to format the home partition but once the installation is over, i have all my data lost in home directory.Is ther any chance that i could get the 165 gb junk data or atleast some 200 mb of important data
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Mar 21, 2011
I realise that this is not a pure Linux Q, but I am hoping for tolerance and even help!After removing the partitions (/,/home) that held an older Linux installation, gparted showed the original Windows XP partition followed by the new unallocated space. On rebooting, there was a Grub rescue error (text not noted, sorry). A live install running gparted shows a totally empty disk!
The removed OS was booted via Grub2 and I imagine that it is choking when there is no secondary(?) file to be found since it was vaped. I also imagine that this is a fairly straight-forward matter, something like replacing the MBR but I am so far from Windows these days that I am unsure how to progress with rescuing the partition. The machine has no floppy - that's how I would have initially booted it way back when. Is this something that I can do either through a Linux live distro or via a Windows CD?
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Aug 21, 2009
This is my first time using Fedora. My previous experience is from Ubuntu. However I want to give a try for Fedora so I went ahead to install it on my new computer. Problem is that Fedora Installer (Live CD) wiped out my NTFS Partition. Causing my computer unable to recover Vista from factory DVD because it lost system partition as well. I want to know if this is my error or a bug in installer.
Original partition setup:
220 GB - Vista System Partition (NTFS)
14 GB - Recovery Partition (NTFS)
First I resized system partition under Windows Management in Vista:
170 GB - System
50 GB - Unallocated
14 GB - Recovery
Using GParted from Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD, moved recovery to the left:
170 GB - System
14 GB - Recovery
50 GB - Unallocated
Rebooted into Vista, make sure everything is fine. Then put in FC 11 Live CD, using custom layout setup in partition, intended partition layout is:
170 GB - System (NTFS) - Primary sda1
14 GB - Recovery (NTFS) - Primary sda2
200 MB - /boot (ext3) - Primary sda3
sda4 - Extended Partition
45.8 GB - / (ext4) - sda5
4 GB - swap - sda6
After I check my setup and pressed enter, it returned with unable to format /boot error: -1. Restart FC installer, it tells me that my hard drive needs to be re-initialized. I clicked no and reboot. BIOS tells me that no OS is found. Attempting to recover from factory DVD failed, telling me that system partition is gone. I want to know did I do something wrong or is this a bug in FC installer.
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Nov 29, 2010
Around 2008 i seem to remember PartEd on the command-line was able to rescue deleted partitions and gave a choice of whether to recover the partition as a Primary or Logical Partition. I have tried testdisk but didn't really grok what i was doing. I successfully moved a "Windows Recovery" partition to the end of my hard-drive, immediately after the drive's Extended Partition.
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Dec 29, 2010
I'm slack 13.1, I am trying to install it, but always gives an error. I type cfdisk and appears this error:
Fatal error: bad primary partition 2: Partition ends in the final partial cylinde Press any key to exit cfdisk
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Jan 18, 2010
So I tried adding a new, 2nd hard drive to my Ubuntu 9.04 desktop for some additional storage and only managed to kill my system so that it won't boot up anymore (I just get a blinking cursor after the BIOS does its thing).I could sure use a little help getting back to a functioning system, and then adding the second drive. I tried following the instructions from this link to add the 2nd drive:
(So the forum rules won't let me post the link, neato. Here it is with spaces added):
h t t p s : / / h e l p . u b u n t u . c o m / c o m m u n i t y / I n s t a l l i n g A N e w H a r d D r i v e
[code]....
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Dec 30, 2010
Fedora 14 xfce
I have the following partition setup. I would like to know how can I convert the logical partition sda6 to a primary partition.
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
[Code].....
I would like to convert sda6 to a primary partition, the reason for this it to install windows 7 starter.
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Feb 22, 2011
creating a new partition when i have only primary partition on my 40gb harddisk.
what i did while installation was selected use entire partition and now i want a additional partition other than primary ?
I want to assign 10GB for Primary one and wanna create Two 14GB partitions , I Also dont know what Swap partition Is.
Since i am a month old ( January 2011 ! ) UBUNTU user who hates MS Windows now, if i gets this problem solved , i can convince more people to replace their OS to Ubuntu .
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Mar 13, 2011
I formatted a 16GB USB flash drive via right click. Then I ran gparted and got as far as this [image attached]
Do I choose Primary Partition or Extended Partition for this second partition?
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Jan 7, 2011
I had Ubuntu 10.04 on my laptop, and updated to 11.04. For some reason, it didn't work anymore (after 5 mins, it was freezing) so I wanted to reinstall and get to 10.04 again (I installed it using Wubi, on Windows 7, separate partition). But there was no Ubuntu in the ADD/REMOVE list. Ok so I used a partition wizard to notice that the partition with Ubuntu was recognized as "Others" (not NTFS or anything),
so I told the program to WIPE it, format it as NTFS and I was planning to reinstall Ubuntu 10.04 over there. But it seems like this was a big mistake - when I rebooted my laptop, I got the GRUB RESCUE console. I want to make it run again so I can get into my Windows 7 at least and to get to the Ubuntu 10.04.
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Feb 25, 2010
i have 2 partitions. one with vista and the other with ubuntu. i would like to make another primary partition from the free space in my ubuntu partition. anyway to do this?
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